So I was a K-Mart Blue Light Special, So What?

sooooo about that whole court of gilded birds thing

Sun, 20 Dec 2009 21:19:12 GMT

I am still trying on the whole 'rewrite and finish!' front. And now I have like half the new first chapter done! So I am going to ask that you read it, and then tell me just how over-the-top the writing is, so I can correct before I get too invested in FLOWERINESS. Again.

Chapter One: Beguiling the Hours

WORKING SUBTITLE: In which Kymnir should not quit his day job to embark on a new career as a psychiatrist/Good Friend just yet

    It was glorious summer in the palace, though spring damp lingered on its outer walls; and the only thing decaying behind its flower-decked gates was a king. His slow death did not detract from the beauty of the heat: it marked the feverish, undignified end of a feverish, undignified reign, no more. Still, the courtiers were resigned to waiting it out in mostly respectful silence. (The queen had exiled two ladies in waiting for inappropriate gaiety.) They amused themselves with quieter pursuits: noonday catnaps, mediocre poetry, and cool sherbets imported from the northlands.

    All but one, that is. He kept bare quarters on the highest story of the east wing that no aristocrat would have dreamed of living in, with droppings spattered everywhere, and enormous brass cages in the place of proper furnishing. And while the other courtiers were waiting, he was working.

    "I sometimes think you are too enamored of your birds," his friend Altic said, on that sweet summer's day. He lay sprawled across the lone low-backed sofa Kymnir had deigned to keep, his long legs hooked over the side, and he watched with one eye.

    “Pardon?" Kymnir said, his attention on the drugged and docile thrush laid out before him. One wing splayed out on the tabletop in a graceful curve, and he ran his thumb against the line of pinions, considering the ruffle of quills bent away from skin. Such a drab bird, to be so lovely.

    "Yes, quite so," Lord Altic sighed. He dipped his spoon into the glass of sherbet at his elbow and licked fruit-stained ice off its rim. "I don't know how you can stand it. Dissecting and measuring and customizing. Especially on a day like this."

    "It is what I'm paid for," he said absently as he broke off one of the smaller feathers, little more than a wisp of down, and frowned at the white fracture-line in the translucent calamus where he’d twisted it.

    Altic waved a dismissive hand. "You aren't paid to make them with individual intestinal tracts.”

    Them. Yes. The birds in the cages. Birds and birds, for there were two sorts of fowl kept in his sunny comfortless rooms: those of meat and those of metal. Both sang, when the whim took them that way, and the songs at least were hard to tell apart. But only the imitations were, aha, profitable.

    "There is no other way to make them. Every detail matters; get too many wrong and they'd fall apart like the real thing even as they act like the real thing," Kymnir said, which was almost true, or rather, was wishful thinking of a useful kind. It was a pity Altic didn't gossip enough to spread it about. The more of his competition misdirected into imagining that his delicate machinery was the key to his success, the better. If he would have preferred to think that himself-- well. Every creator has their small regrets.

    "Lying witch," Altic said good-naturedly. "Sorcery is not so logical. No, you just like measuring things."

    “I admit nothing.”

    "Hm. Sendre says you should get out more, you know."

    "She's trying to tell you that you should get out more," Kymnir said. “Women are subtle, remember? We went over this.”

    "Yes, well, I did guess, why else would I be sitting here?" said Altic.

    He took his fingers off at last and smoothed down the crooked barbs of misplaced plumage as best he could. "The pleasure of my company?"

    "Hah! An obsessive, solitary man whose idea of a lunch break is mocking my wife is not what I call pleasant company."

    "Not your wife. You. And I finished a very good light luncheon with your dear sister-in-law before you arrived, if you must know. Besides," Kymnir said, feeling the way the fine bones of the wing shifted, rolled slightly in their sockets when he pressed, "there's so much to mock."

    "You unkind soul."

    "She really threw you out this morning, hm? You were gone for so long I was starting to wonder whether she'd killed you for a bit of peace and quiet.”

    "Very funny. She told me I was going to pace us right out of carpet and that if this kept up she’d have the maids barricade the nurseroom door," Altic said morosely. "And then the physician chimed in, worse yet. Said -" and here he wrinkled his large nose "- that anxiety could ruin the humoral balance."

    "There's nothing less balanced than a nervous husband hanging about,” Kymnir said. "How is she, anyway?"

    "Tired, still," Altic said. There were dark purple marks under his own eyes: rare in this weather, which made spoiled young men and women languid, mornings and most afternoons frittered away on silk sheets. Not that it was otherwise in winter, of course, but in summer the sheets were not so sticky afterwards. "Better than she was."

    "And your son?"

    "Loud."

    Kymnir grinned. "Your mother wouldn't be pleased to hear you so casual about your house's new heir."

    "My mother--" Altic said, then paused. He sank deeper into the cushions and breathed out, slowly, and in.

    "I forgot to mention; she-- Sendre I mean-- wanted to know what you're working on now."

    "A thrush," Kymnir said, letting the gaping wound in the conversation pass.

    "Who for?"

    "The regent."

    Kymnir placed a miniature ruler along the diagonal of the wing, marked down the length, and became aware that his friend was staring at him, long-stemmed spoon halfway to parted lips.

    "The regent?"

    "The regent who will rule until Prince Bastien comes of age.”

    He remembered, a little late, that Altic had been born and bred loyal to his technical liege. His friend had a face like an axe, and the discomfort was at obviously at odds with his sharp nose, stretching the skin tight. Kymnir looked down, irritated for reasons that eluded him.

    "Seems rather blasphemous," Altic murmured, "to be thinking of a man's replacement while the man himself yet breathes."

    "Blasphemous?" He pinched the thin webbed skin around the joints of the wing. There was no way to simulate the effect exactly, but he could use fine wire cords stretched across steel ribs like bone spars to produce a similar one, if he did it right. "He has a kind of consumption, in the advanced stages. He will not outlive the night. Messages will already have been sent to his chosen, as you say, replacement. And a project like this requires at least three days of intensive work--with which you are not helping, by the way --"

    "Examining entrails cannot be intensive," Altic said. "Merely mind-numbing for everyone but you."

    "-- and I'd like to have it done for the investiture. Hence I am starting now."

    He located his compass and positioned its arms so that the V forked the thrush's shoulder, heedless of how its twin points scratched the tabletop’s gloss. Altic stared, pensive, his chin on his hand.

    "I am a commoner," Kymnir said, more gently, when he was finished notating the angle of the wingset in narrow scientific script. "I don't know the king. I don't have a particular interest in knowing the king posthumously."

    "No, I suppose not," Altic said. "He was-- is-- was an-- unpleasant man."

    "Yes."

    "The king, though."

    "That too, yes," Kymnir said, counting struts that radiated out from the second joint.

    "My family has always--"

    "Yes."

    "And everyone is waiting for him to end."

    "Yes."

    "It must be the heat," Altic said, glumly. "I don't care, really. I just. I.”

    "That may be the worst excuse for guilt I've ever heard," Kymnir said. He tucked the wing back into place; stopped to admire the way it fit the flank's contour, completed the slight curve.

    "It's not guilt."

    "No? Then what would you call it?"

    "Pity," Altic said, holding his glass of melting ice up to the light.

    "Wasted on him."

    "And you. I should have known better than to bring it up."

    "You misjudge me," Kymnir said. He placed a hand over the exact location of his heart, letting the bird rest undisturbed, albeit briefly. "I am listening eagerly. Why pity?"

    Altic was silent for a long moment, and held himself quite still, as if poised to rise. Thinking, so much was obvious. And Kymnir had an inkling as to what he was thinking of. Sunlight slanted across the other man’s cheek, blotting out the shadows until he might have been just another mosaic: depthless, opaque, dry paint and glass on stone. When he did speak it was with a certain calculated carelessness. "Why not?"

    "That's a terrible answer. You ought to be ashamed of yourself."

    “Oh, believe me,” said Altic, “I am.”

    And this time Kymnir couldn't read the look on his face. He shook his head, turned back to his work, and fanned the tail feathers out by force, stretched both wings out at once, and fixed the specimen thus and so with clasps designed for the purpose.

    He was just about to unroll the drafting paper when his friend added, without warning, "But someone has to pity him."

    Kymnir decided that he was tired of the nervous defiance wound tight in Altic’s voice, the mincing steps towards seriousness. Under ordinary circumstances he tried to let other people guide the conversation-- it was safer, since in this place he was by necessity a stranger, alien in ways he could not overcome; but he had limited patience, after all.

    “You lunatic royalist,” he said, not unkindly, “that's what his widow is for.”

    Altic barked a laugh, and relaxed somewhat, stirring his sherbet. He seemed very grateful for the excuse to deflect, nearly as grateful as Kymnir was that he’d taken it, and Kymnir concluded that he had done the correct thing. In any case, honesty was a dangerous business and not to be entered upon lightly; it required alcohol and as many charms against listening ears as could be obtained on short notice and at least a little forward planning, none of which were available to them now. He dipped his pen in blue ink and drew the first lines of the bird’s body as it looked whole.

    “Morian? Morian pity him?” Altic said.

    “No?” He raised an eyebrow, which hid his brilliant relief handily, and he unrolled the drafting paper.

    “I doubt it.”

    “They always seemed quite affectionate to me.”

    Which was an understatement. The queen had spent much of her stepson’s birthday feast feeding sugared lumps to her almost transparent husband, and while Kymnir paid the minimum of attention possible to the royal family’s games he could think of similar public displays. Long fingers down a weak wet throat.

    “Oh, they are. Were. Are,” Altic said, flustered. “I only meant… well. I don’t know. She’s not the pitying sort, is she.” It wasn’t question.

    Kymnir answered regardless. “I saw her give one of the physicians a very pitying look when he suggested she let him take care of his Majesty’s diet, I know that.”

    “I think you’re mistaking murderous intentions for pity.”

    “It’s not murder if you’re royal,” Kymnir said gravely.

    Altic smiled an unwilling smile. “Well, executive intentions, then.”

    “Executions are hard on the treasury, as I understand it. Perhaps she’ll take the informal route. Is cull the word? Culling the herd, yes?” The sketch completed, Kymnir opened a lower drawer, chose one small glass bottle from a row of identical vessels, uncorked it, and placed it on the desk. Afternoon sun, spilling in from the window, fired the honey-like liquid inside to amber glory. He ignored it.

    “Leeches aren’t herd animals,” said Altic.

    Kymnir selected three rather more specific knives from a spread of not at all identical cutlery in the next drawer up: blued steel hammered into exquisite blades of all shapes and sizes, and handles jeweled or mother-of-pearl-embossed or gilded or carved into bone roses. Impractical, of course, but then so many of his finer tools were gifts, and noblemen were magpies to a man. He said: “The nest, then. Or brood. Pack?”

    It took longer to extract the matching pairs of pincers, but he managed to do so without actually cutting anything open or knocking over the bottle with his arm, which was as much as he could hope for, distracted as he was by borrowed new concerns, not quite buried under poor jokes.

    “Pack sounds about right,” Altic said.

    “Yes?”

    He’d have to worry about this business of inconvenient undercurrents later. In the small hours of the morning, when the silence was tolerable and inviting. For now-- he had a bird to dissect.

    “I believe my lunch break is over,” he added.

    “Oh yes?”

    “That means be quiet.”

    “Ah," Altic said, and subsided.

    Kymnir made a deep incision in the thrush’s throat, and dragged the fine edge of the blade down, forcing it through tough flesh and bisecting the little body in one stroke. Blood beaded along the line of the calculated wound like red stitches on the inner seam of a white sleeve, and the thrush stirred weakly, roused at last by what pain penetrated its intoxication. The clamps held it in position as he made four shallower diagonal cuts, peeled back the resultant flaps of skin, and examined the expose layers of muscle and fat with a practiced eye. By the time he was peeling back the triangles of striped tissue, careful of the tendons snapping off the ribs, it had ceased its struggling.

   There was more blood than was ideal, despite his precautions, but nothing he couldn’t work through. It wouldn’t be a problem for long. He slid out two ribs, brittle and stained pinkish: two were sufficient to open up a way to the heart.     He cut it out.     “Urgh,” Altic said; to Kymnir he sounded very far away.

    Ruddy meat pulsed in the delicate grip of his silvered pincers, glistening like a pomegranate seed. He raised it to eye level. He had been quick and it hadn’t stopped beating quite yet, the infinitesimal valves swelling like wings, as if it were not an organ but a second, smaller bird that had been freed from the larger’s breast.

    Good.

    Kymnir dropped the thrush’s heart in the open bottle. He went to his knees, then, so that he would be eye level with the bottle’s contents, and watched the heart sink into the honeyed substance by degrees; observed as it began to blacken, shadows threading up its sides where the meat was being transmuted into something else, something more. Out of the corner of his eye, he caught a glimpse of Altic rolling over and burying his face in the cushions, and it was with some effort that he bit back a laugh at the man’s comical grimace. They had been watching the same process, after all, and the disparity of their reactions struck him favorably for a moment, tickled his learned sense of justice.

    For a moment. Then he was lost to his work.

    When Kymnir surfaced he was quite alone. The afternoon had fled; small high windows set in his crumbling walls were turning a dusky rose. He crossed the room, leaned his cheek against the bubbled bulging glass, still hot, and looked out. There wasn’t much sun left: a slim slice of gold visible over the pale puzzle-piece rooftops of the city like gold filigree on a teacup’s rim, no more. Below, people were filling up the palace gardens, trailing dark skirts and subdued laughter that he could nevertheless hear from here.

    He put the time at seven o‘ clock, or a little later, and paused on his stand, conscious of the mild ache in his forearms, in his belly. Altic had left hours ago for an early supper in the comfort of his own home. The mess of feather and bone and blood on the desk, which once had been a thrush, was crowned by glittering flies, but that was all right: he’d finished the detailed drawings of entrails and skeleton and musculature he needed. And the heart was safe in the drawer.

    He wondered how the king was doing, and how Altic was doing, and then he spied a familiar pale head among the starved ornamental trees; Sendre. He decided he’d done enough to warrant an evening in the company of his betters, and went to change out of his stained shirt, humming tunelessly under his breath.

    “I didn’t expect to see you here, Kymnir,” she said, when he approached her, picking his way through the statues and rosebushes. She was sitting on the lip of a stone fountain, running the clear water idly through her thin fingers. The finch he’d made for her hovered an inch from the lobe of her small ear. There were, he saw, new lines around her eyes and mouth.

    “I might say the same of you,” Kymnir said. “The way Altic talks, I’d thought you were bedridden.”

    “Thank gods, no,” Sendre said. “The good doctor says I’ve made great progress, and I am pleased to say that I am now more than able to be bored and vertical at the same time.”

    “I hope I’m not boring you, my lady,” Kymnir said, clasping his hands in a gesture full of exaggerated sincerity.

    “Your creation rather compensates for your lack.” She attempted to look stern as she teased the finch’s jointed claws out of her straight fine hair, tickling its jeweled nape. The finch fluttered and whistled a few surprised notes at her touch, which rearranged themselves into a wordless expression of pleasure. How the finch could feel anything at all he had no idea; there were limits, in his strange, uncertain science.

    “Don’t take it out. It’s well-placed. Makes your hair look like… what was it? Thistle-down in the moonlight,” he said, cheerfully mangling a line from a recent and abysmal poem published by a royal favorite.

    “And your hair looks like a thistle. You were working, I take it?” She succeeded in detangling the bright soft strands at last, and the finch took off from her shoulder, landing in the water. She laughed.

    “You wound me, my lady. I know you would never have guessed if Altic hadn’t told you,” he said, patting his curls with exaggerated self-consciousness. “And it’ll rust if you leave it there for too long, you know.“ He scooped the finch out and handed it to her. It threatened to drip all over her silk sleeve, wings clicking resentfully, but she took it without concern. She couldn’t comprehend its complaints, he reminded himself; playing god had its advantages, if knowing the language of decorative things that had no brains could be called an advantage. “Where is Altic, anyway?”

    “Getting me a drink. Why?”

    “Oh-- no reason. I was surprised to see you alone.”

    It was the wrong thing to say, or else the wrong tone to use. Or both. She eyed him curiously.

    “You want to discuss something with him?”

    “No.”

    “Then what?“

    “Ah…“

    “Out with it, Kymnir.”

    “Do you know, I think childbirth has made you even more radiant?”

    She folded her arms against her chest.

    “He’s worried,” he said, “that’s all. I expected him to be hovering.”

    “Ah,” she said. “You weren’t wrong, I think. Altic--”

    “He wasn’t wrong about what?” Altic said, behind him. Kymnir turned around to find that the other man had gotten not merely one drink, but a whole pitcher, wine tinted murky and purplish in the clear blue light of dusk, and the slices of fruit glistening where they floated on top.

    “Your taste in beverages,” she lied, and smiled while Kymnir hastily donned an appropriate smirk.

    Altic snorted. “Here, dear,” he said, filling the wineglass he held in his other hand, which he passed to her. She took it by the bowl, fingers splayed around the broad curve of the glass. That was the manners of the merchant’s daughter she’d been once showing through, Kymnir knew, the clearest indication he’d seen yet of just how hard these last few weeks had hit her.

    “Thank you.” She drank.

    Mid-swallow, the bells began to ring.

    These, he knew, though he had never laid eyes on them, were enormous, heavy bells, and they produced a sound as rich and deep and staggering as fermented corn. and silence rolled into the space it carved in every conversation. Kymnir saw the courtiers around him look up, like wolves to the moon, long noses scenting the air. A sudden stench of relief, that’s what it was. Yes.

    Heralds leaned from the tops of the tallest towers, high boyish voices streaming from out faceless figures. Evening soft in their brown hair. “The king is dead!” they cried. “Long live the king!”

    “Long live the king,” he murmured. He did not time it quite right, and neither did his companions; around him an uneven chorus rose up in a thorny tangle of too many people straining to speak with a single voice.

    The gardens emptied out after that. Sendre and Altic lingered just long enough to spare him a parting word, an afterthought; Altic’s arm close around her shoulders, Sendre’s expression veiled by her hair. Sendre asked, or more accurately ordered, him to come by for supper the next day.

    And they were gone, too.

    Kymnir reluctantly put aside his wine with its floating fresh fruit, and dragged his feet as he walked back to the back doors of the palace, preferring to feel the cool air on his neck while he could. Unfortunate that the king could not have lasted longer; he had been looking forward to a late night and good conversation, and now it seemed he might as well have not come down.

    On the other hand, the thought of what Altic’s reaction to such a sentiment would be did go some ways towards cheering him up. He smiled to himself, and went inside, his footfalls sharp and remorseless on the abandoned halls’ marbled floors.

come athelas! come athelas!

Tue, 08 Dec 2009 03:09:31 GMT

What was it I said?

The language we speak is so inefficient, when it comes to expressing pain.

God I would rewrite that but: headache. If only I knew what heather in the sun (stems itching my cheek and knitted soft over winged thumbnails of pain (bees (heather, full of bees, and in the sun))) smelled like. Or an orchard. Leaves in water, small sharp leaves, the thin clean green bruised dark.

wait whut is that discworld fic I spy with my little eye

Sat, 05 Dec 2009 08:41:04 GMT

"That makes ten words," said Grace Speaker, pressing her thumb to the last letter of gaskin. "Drink."

Vetinari drank, and tried not to think about what the scumble undoubtedly was doing to the inside of his mouth(1). His thoughts, by way of revenge, immediately turned to what the scumble was doing to the inside-- and outside, and everything in-between-- of his liver. He carefully failed to wince, but he did glance up from the mess of hints to the woman across from him, who was wearing a long-toothed smile that went rather well with her necklace of bottle caps and her short, fraying salt-and-pepper hair, much of which was sticking straight up from her skull thanks to, he presumed, the... ah... excitement of... of crosswording. Or maybe it was the alcohol; or the air, dry and crackling. It wasn't the right time of year for lightening storms, but then Ankh-Morpork wasn't the right kind of city for seasonable weather.

She'd filled in two words while he'd been staring blankly, he realized. It was possible his faith in his own iron self control was not as well-placed as it could be. Especially considering he hadn't had anything stronger than sherry in the last twenty years. But what was done was done. And so on.

He shrugged and leaned in until their shadows bled into each other. What was probably tomorrow's hangover gave a little wave of pre-introduction, as it were, somewhere just behind his left temple. Outside, thunder rolled.

It occured to the Patrician that if he'd known the extent to which his association with Miss Speaker was going to affect his health and his sobriety, it was possible that he would never have sought out her acquaintance at all. He gave her another slanting look as he filled in number eighteen across (caducity: hint: Grandma's due for an upgrade to the status of 'fertilizer'). "Derived from the Latatian perishable," she said, and: "of course." She sounded annoyed.

He thought: possible, but unlikely in the extreme. Pet store owner. Ahaha.

That said, his original plan to drink her under the table before checking under the, er, other table for the unlicensed history work he knew(2) was there somewhere was looking increasingly ill-advised...

(1) Put it this way: his taste buds had no similar luxury.

(2) The word 'knew', set in indignant italics to boot, means a lot more coming from someone with an army of clerks whose sole task it is to make sure they, ahem, knew everything there was to know. Also, a self-animated filing system(3).

(3) Courtesy of Leonard of Quirm, and officially called 'Cabinets That Sort Themselves Out And Have Exciting Metal Arms'.

And there was much rejoicing.

Thu, 03 Dec 2009 03:20:42 GMT

Perfect score on the PSAT, and as a reward my mother takes me out to a small neon-fronted restaurant, where, over two plates full of fish with sweet white flesh and an unpronounceable name, we talk about futures. Mine. She wants me to go to a good college. A good college. She always has, of course, but now she gives me details, fanning out the possibilities in her thin hand as fortune tellers always do. Columbia or UPenn or Dartmouth, they'll take me, they will, she says. Her smile takes up most of her face, but you know, seeing that many small yellowish teeth, it's not as scary as it ought to be, it really isn't. And I feel pretty good.

When we get back it is dark and light stabs out the kitchen window, turning the leaves left on the finger-thin branches of the apple tree's crown bright, deep colors, yellow and orange and the green of a frog with poison in its rich skin.

Then I thought:

Sat, 28 Nov 2009 19:55:00 GMT

The lake deserves more.

It is-- a good lake, even if, right now, it looks like countless bad ones. It is hemmed in by broad, uninterested mountains, whose lower shoulders are diluted by a haze of cobalt blue at the point directly opposite me, here, against the fence, but whose tops are streaked with the same merciless white no matter where they stand. The marshy vegetable matter seems to have grown across its length and breadth overnight, combed out in thin close-set strands like a net of dark gold filigree that divides it up. In places under the mess the water moves and moves, because with the snow came wind.

The pools nearest at hand are all still, though. Stagnant maybe. Inappropriately tropical. Shaded the bright pale aquamarine of oxidized silver.

This is because of the cloud reaching across the sky. It is gorged on water and it looks almost as soft as the heavenly handmaidens claim: soft and miserable. Its mass has spread all about the left half of the sky, its fat outermost fingers rimmed in light like real fingers are, when cupped around a cigarette lighter, except white, not red. Shut up, it counts. Its underside flat and weirdly distorted as if resting on a low curved glass. The distortion enough to make my eyes slide away. And the shadow it casts sharpens the yellow light, the stupidly summery sky facing it from across the lake. A marvelous shadow, a good shadow, like a plague or a secret.

The dog paws at her eyes and ducks her head and pisses a green flower-shaped mark into the fresh snow. I crouch down low enough that the snow threatens to invade my boots and soak my socks. I tell her: We're going home today.

She doesn't forgive me for lingering, though. Not until we have passed the clusters of pine cones so thoroughly snowed over that they look like cities of heart-shaped white houses, and I peel off my snow-sticky gloves and push my fingers between her snapping teeth. She dances the rest of the way. I... well. I bounce on a string. There are probably worse ways to go.

Snow in the dark

Sat, 28 Nov 2009 07:15:06 GMT

Exquisite six-sided snowflakes drifted down like mayflies; we stood and shivered and ran gloved fingers through our wet hair. Our dark perfect-preserved footprints shone slickly against the dusting of easy lovely white. Under its thick icy coating, the car looked like a sleeping animal, something enormous and solid with improbably slender legs. J drew a heart on the windshield, cracked a little where whole sheets of snow had been dislodged by her thumb.

My father took photo after photo from the doorway, framed by curling tendrils of yellow light that faded into the singing night by slow degrees. I leaned flash-blind against the fender until I could feel the water even through my fat plastic-lined coat.

I am telling you this out of a kind of perverseness. I have not much to say about Thanksgiving itself, see. There was food, there were ill-advised marshmallows; we played a drawn-out bitter game of Scrabble and fought over it. J always wins, and she always plays terrible, terrifying words, sharp short no-longer-alien words with the stink of stolen things not yet rubbed off them by us. An unsatisfying celebration but also a warm one. Comfortable, if inadequate.

And now my scalp is everywhere stung with cold.

Quote unquote walkies

Thu, 26 Nov 2009 22:06:58 GMT

The ground is flat here: the bare front yards of the rented rooms smear right into the road, mud on old asphalt. Snow slathered over the red pine needles and the gray dust in egg-shaped patches like bearskin rugs, sides raised, thickened into almost-banks that glitter as if it is some enormous pale stone, half-buried under mud. The dog walks lightly over it, webbed toes spread. She is half husky, half who knows what, a slim slippery thing with fur that blends into the sable shadows of this place. I give her all the slack there is in the leash and sometimes, looking out of the corner of my eye, I cannot tell her from the thin spiky-headed saplings and dying tangles of weeds that rise out of the snow, their scaly stems circled by perfect, smooth-lipped holes that are and always have been my favorite kind of absence.

Her eyes are paler in this light, not the glistening dark brown that makes her look like one of the family but rather amber, clear and treacherous. She likes this place: I can see it in the way she moves, quick darting movements, and the way she does not move, standing poised, ludicrously thin legs straight, tufts of fur on her elbows standing out, narrow muzzle raised, shining reddish ears folded high on her skull. Her shifting shadow runs to blue. We walk, the two of us, with all our senses reaching out like unseasonal tentacles, rubbery and alien. Drunk on cold.

The lake, when we come to it, is as curious a mixture of the ugly and the breathtaking as every other sight in this place. Too much water to take in at once, mottled like steel and plastered, around the edges, with a marshy mess of plant matter apparently frozen into the almost perfectly transparent ice. Overhead, an uneven blue as pale as my unfortunate English teacher's eyes, brushed in places with ghostly cirrus thumb-prints. Back and forth we go beside the railing until a flock of geese, flying in a direction I can only suppose is south, startle us out of our two joined webs with the sharp scissoring sound of their wings and their half-hearted honks.

I recognize nothing on the way home, for all my accounting. There is a running man, with a friendly pink face that makes me think of vultures in profile, down to the slope of chin into throat. "Good morning," he says, and my dog snaps at his hand, her whole uncoiling body one long memory of the geese she could not reach, and he laughs. "Sorry, sorry," I say, laughing too, and he says, "Aw, don't worry about it," and, "I had to leave my dog at home;" he leaves me with his wooly cap bobbing back, wistfulness open in his flapping knees.

HAHA NANOWRIMO HAHAHAHA

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 23:19:23 GMT

Yeah. I am doing it! But unlike last year, you are not going to see more of it than what is unscrupulously included below, not for a long, long time, at least. SO ENJOY! Or. Don't. I have included two beginnings that I tried before settling back on my original idea, because I am awesome like that, and I plan to add the other two that I came up with as well once I am Not At The Library.

In her last week of rehab, her brother sent her a letter, the stark white envelope addressed in meticulous cursive. She ripped it open with her thumb and shook out the single folded sheet, which was quite blank. After some thought, she went back to the envelope, and while it is true that she had to tape the envelope together to read the ‘address of sender’, she was pretty sure it still counted as permission, nay, invitation to come crash on his couch for a few weeks while she was getting things together.

Which was how she found herself in front of a scrawny brick building wearing a miserable expression spelled out in large low windows. Her brother’s apartment number was 406, which meant, she realized, with a faint pang of regret for what she was about to do to her basically innocent legs, that she’d have to venture onto the treacherous wooden stairway slouching against the wall like an underfed teenager worrying at a cigarette.

The minutes following were long minutes. And by the end, the wobbling ache in her thighs felt stronger than any of the surrounding sinews. She decided to take a breather on the top step. It was only sense: the bluish evening air, thin as broth, ought to soothe her burning lungs enough that she might even be able to say something to Henry, after all the effort that'd gone into locating him. What she really needed was a fire extinguisher with a nozzle that fit down her throat, but she’d make do, and did, sitting down hard. Collapsing, really, folding up like a cheap lawn chair, a complicated process that ended with her head framed comfortably by her round knees, so that she found herself eye to eye-- or, rather, eye to empty eye socket-- with the thing stapled to the underside of the warped and rotting wood.

At which point she forgot about her brilliant plan to put the ‘breathe’ in ‘breather’ entirely.

"Christ on a crutch," she hissed, bracing herself against the railing as the details of the sight laid out before her penetrated her skull.

The thing was a cat. A dead cat. A very, very dead cat.

Its swollen pink stomach was a mass of stitches, the sparse remaining tufts of fur hedged by ugly seams, like grass in February; there was something fundamentally wrong with the broken curve of its ribcage under the loose raw skin. Its eyeballs had been scooped out, quite neatly, though the eyelids were ragged from, she guessed, being peeled back with too much force.

And there was something familiar about the arrangement of its legs, something that seeded suspicion inside her. The sort of suspicion that is a close cousin to hope. Against her better judgment, she sniffed at it, nostrils flaring.

The reek of garlic hit her like a blow.

She pulled herself up, slowly. She was conscious that her face hurt because she was grinning, and had been since the idea occurred to her in the first place. So Henry had taken up the family trade while she was in Mexico, after all. Well, well, well.

It is an undeniable fact that few sentences are as sweet to pronounce, as pleasant to think through from curled end to curled end, as I told you so: China was by her admittedly deplorable standards being quite kind by going so far as to school her mouth into a marginally subtler smile before knocking on the door.

There followed a woolly skin of quiet that lay uneasily over staccato footsteps, and Henry opened the door.

His face was not precisely as she remembered it; his skin had dried from brown to white while she was gone, like driftwood does, and all the blood had pooled in the bulbous tip of his nose and in his long chin and along the curves of his high cheekbones, bringing out the shape of the underlying skeletal architecture with touches of that delicate pink that flares up at the heart of certain seashells.

He said, a distinct note of accusation in his voice, "You came.”

She bounced up and down on the balls of her feet until the welcome mat squealed for mercy, and she grinned at him. “I did,” she said. “Long time no see, Henry. Are you going to let me in or what?”

"Well," he said, eyes slanting over her, "all right." He stepped back and sideways. China sidled in after him and helpfully slammed the door shut after her with her elbow.

“So how are you,” he went on, when the echoes had died down. The inflection ran a shade too straight for it to be a question.

Which didn’t stop her from answering, after a moment spent contemplating the low crusted white ceiling. “Pretty great,” she said, and added the first truth that came to mind. “I lost weight, you know?”

She did not add: fat is lighter than muscle. She didn’t need to.

"Rehab agree with you, then?"

"No," she said, "leaving rehab agreed with me."

He said nothing but his face flattened out a little and she could see the smugness starting to flow. She didn’t begrudge him it; there was no way to begrudge him it, really, for he was an extension of the faint funny-shaped shadows that dominated this pale hallway and if she let her indignation leak out he'd probably dissolve entirely and leave her apologizing, as only hermit crabs and squatters can, to the things he’d left behind him.

“Did it now?”

"There were too many nice people," she said.

He snorted, rough and bubbling; it turned into a cough halfway through. “Don’t know how you lasted as long as you did.”

“Pills are amazing things.”

He shoved his hands deep into his jean pockets. She wondered idly what instinct he was quelling. “I guess that’s about right,” he said. “And I guess my dear brother-in-law made sure you popped a lot of them, huh?”

“Yes indeed,” China said, and then, slower: “Yes indeed.”

He raised his eyebrows in a way that gentled the lines of his face, and for once his irises were as clear and dark a gray as her own. There was nothing like shared hatred for making people kind, China thought, and tried unsuccessfully to remember a time when they had been closer, as siblings, for any reason that was not a bitter silence indistinguishable from this one.

On the other hand, they could be bonding over much less enjoyable things. It might make them petty but it also made them happy! And that was what counted.

“Well,” he said, that penny of a word balanced on the tracks derailing her whole train of thought. “We can talk about that after dinner. Eh?”

“Quite,” she said.

“I hope you like macaroni and cheese,” he said, crackling away. She followed him, head cocked to catch his knees’ complaints, and didn’t look straight ahead until they were stepping across the line that divided the hallway’s hardwood floor from the kitchen’s glistening yellow linoleum.

It didn’t look like a room that had any relation to Henry’s existence, with its thick greenish glass countertops and inexplicable bits of brass about the corners. But he slid through its heavier atmosphere easily enough, even if there was a fishlike quality to his movements, and his arms seemed to trail shadows like streamers as they swung back and forth past his sides.

“I do,” she said.

He stared at her.

“Like macaroni and cheese,” she said.

“Right,” he said, expression unreadable. “You know what, why don’t you go look at your room. It’s through the red door in the living room. You can get settled in and things.”

She nodded, and noted that he hadn’t asked how long she’d be staying, and went.

The sun had barely reached its zenith when Ansa’s husband clattered in, hours earlier than he should have. At first her reaction was one of mere flickering, irritated embarrassment: that morning he had asked her to see about his order of spices at the docks, and here she was still curled up on the hearth, because here at least the merciless heat came hand in hand with the pleasant smell of burnt peat, unlike in the steaming streets of the outer city. Wasn’t her fault: the child growing in her belly that had reduced her to a dizzy, useless mess, she groused, in the privacy of her own head.

Then she sat up and saw his face.

Thumb-shaped, plum-dark bruises were blooming on his jaw, and fistfuls of hair had escaped its leather ties to flare up around his pointed skull like a frightened cat's.

She hissed in sympathy, pushing herself to her feet and wiping her gritty palms on her skirt. “Trip on someone important’s foot again, did you?”

“Yes,” Mamic said roughly, and slapped away the hand she lifted to prod his swollen cheek. “Ansa…”

“What?”

“His Lordship suspects me of treason.”

She became aware that he’d left the door ajar, that light was slanting across the rushes on the floor. Anyone could be listening. Anyone probably was. The fact that it didn’t appear to matter at this point-- well.

“Does he now,” she said, ugly terror rising in her stomach. “Why?”

“Probably because he found the scion of the old dynasty hiding in my kitchen.” He barreled on before she could even work up a little honest incredulity. “Look, we don’t have much time. He’s going to release a warrant for your arrest. Yours, you understand?”

“Ah,“ she said, and, with a touch of bitterness, “He must be really, really fond of your cooking.”

Mamic winced. “Yes. Well. If he weren’t we’d both be dead right now.”

“Believe me, I’m grateful. Not as grateful as I’d be if you’d had the sense to keep your nose out of that nest of traitors who call themselves the resistance, but oh, yes, grateful!”

He gave her a crooked, fragile smile that looked odd on his sagging face, and pushed her towards the door. She dug her heels in.

“They’re a nasty bunch, all right. But they’re going to get you out of it.”

She studied his mouth.

“What? How?”

“Come on.”

He pushed harder. Ansa stepped outside, barely conscious, now, of the reek that had so disturbed her stomach earlier, and the weight of the sticky warm air, like a washcloth on her face. He ran and she ran after him, but her legs were awkward, stayed that way even after she hitched her narrow skirt up until the hem was bunched inappropriately high about her knees. The weird alchemy of mud and dung, which recent rain had slathered over the cobblestones like a marinade, sucked at the soles of her boots.

“This way,” he said; she chose not to mention that she might possibly have followed him out on his midnight skulking more than once, and knew at least the first few turns well enough.

They were heading toward the inner city. Specifically, the hollow half of it that had spent the last ten years of the Yellow Lord’s rule decaying, its sprawling manors eaten away by winds and thieves and strains of mildew. It occurred to her that the troublesome scion might, in fact, have been living in the ruins of his ancestral home, not far from here, up until he was found.

“Hello, O unappetizing one,” said the dragon. It was older than he’d expected: the folds of glistening wet flesh on the insides of its outermost eyelids were lined with a translucent yellow liquid like white wine. Maybe as old a dragon as he was a human; it was hard to say for certain, since it lay curled in the shade at the mouth of the cave. Its voice, though, its voice sounded precisely as it ought to have. It was a deep, sweet voice, and it had nothing to do with that alien architecture of jaw and throat; it came rather from some secret organ in its distended gut, the words shaped with blood and bile, not air.

He remembered his instructions belatedly and crouched, wondering how in hell he was meant to echo a reptile’s grace with my stiff spine and swollen joints and twisted leg. But then imitation had looked easy, in the casual lean lines of the helpful hunter who had recommended the method. Imitation was easy, he told himself. It had to be after all these years of making a living off it. It was true that his knees disagreed, but he’d learned to ignore his bones if it meant saving his skin.

The dragon tilted its head like a dog and kept tilting long after the dog’s would have twisted right off. “You stink of dust.”

“Thank you,” he croaked.

“And you’ve studied us. Or studied someone who’s studied us. Or studied someone who’s studied someone who’s--”

“Yes,” he said, hastily, because he didn’t fancy a slow death. (He used to begin stories by saying that there was nothing more dangerous than a dragon’s sense of humor. He regretted it now, but not because it wasn’t a kind of truth.) “I tried to learn a little of you before coming.”

“Did it work?”

“I have no idea.”

Its pebbled lips uncurled, covering the teeth so that only the fine murderous points were left bare, and the line of the mouth stretched, broadened. It took him a desperate heartbeat to see the movement for what it was: a clever facsimile of a smile.

“Hm,” it said. “Well. What do you want?”

He swallowed, or tried to. “I want to be protected.”

“From?”

“The Yellow Lord’s hounds.”

The dragon laughed. “They hunt you? Why?”

“See, the old king was my half-brother,” he said.

It slithered out on its belly from the cave, until its nostrils were mere inches from his face, and the heat of its breath made the air hazy, and its skin was barred by sunlight. The rough scales, he saw, were like old copper, greenish around the rough edge; but the frill of smoother skin fanned out around its cheeks was gold. “Yes, it’s there under the dust. Old gold. In your blood, hm? Go on,” it said. There was a sharp slant of curiosity to its inflection, and having once heard it he could hardly help falling into the rhythms of a storyteller.

“He tolerated me in his house, because I was a cripple, and young. And when the Yellow Lord came, with his army, I was spared, because I was a cripple, and middle-aged.” He paused for breath. The dragon’s innermost eyelids slid shut, a gauzy shield for the eye, and it lowered its head, its beard brushing the earth.

It was inspecting the frog-white meat of his leg.

“Useless?” it said, at last.

“It is now,” he said. “Or as good as. I will not be spared a third time because I am a cripple, or because I am old. The Yellow Lord’s son has loosed hounds athirst for royal blood, and they do not know the newly born from the nearly dead.” He stilled the trembling in his wrists; he spread his hands. “So I need. To be protected.”

“From hounds,” the dragon said, chewing on the word. “Which is why you came to me rather than hiring a bodyguard.”

“Yes.”

“Was that wise?” it said. “How, exactly, do you propose to pay me for my services?”

He took a deep breath. “With stories.”

“Ah."

Hessa liked summer, liked her work in summer, although heat made handling the bodies a messy business, and it could be a long time between graves during that generous season. The look of the forest under the empty sky, open-mouthed and thirsting for light, and the feel of old, deep green shadows on her skin while she dug, after the city‘s high clay walls and stinking streets-- oh, yes, Hessa liked summer, Hessa liked it very well.

That was what she was thinking while she slung her shovel over her shoulders and worked her feet into her boots, anyway. Once she was walking through the flower of summer, she concentrated on the broken, blackened pavement of the old road, and watched for certain landmarks among the more interestingly shaped ruins, which marked the parts of the city that had stood here or here until the wave of trees rolled over them. City that had been swallowed, back in the days before the church had been built on the fracture line of the city‘s half-eaten heart, and the priests had learned vigilance.

What little sky showed through the branches was white as a baby's teeth, and she did not look at it, for all that she’d given it such pleasant names while still tangled in her bed. Underbrush crunching under her solid soles, she tried instead to remember the dead man and his dead wife that she was due to bury.

She'd seen and greeted them before, which was more than could be said for many of the people whose corpses she dealt with: that was because they had lived in the forest. They, alone of their neighbors, hadn’t moved when the trees spread roots and cracked cobblestones around them. They were very old, and looked similar in the way that very old couples do, and they kept their own counsel, and they lived in the forest. A vague mental image of flat, fine-boned faces. And that was all she could dredge up.

After breathing in enough of the air that pooled, cool and old and still, in the hollowed woods, she decided she would rather do her job with an empty head and full lungs. She walked on. The spirals of light filtering through leaves warmed her back.

SOMEONE NEEDS THEIR INNER EAR CHECKED

Tue, 13 Oct 2009 05:43:03 GMT

So today I fell over in the shower.

Twice.

I have matching long tight stretches of numb skin! One on my left elbow, one on my right arm.

I am also probably going to be in pain, come the golden morrow.

*conks out*

Unseen Academicals, guys.

Thu, 08 Oct 2009 05:56:42 GMT

WAS IT AMAZING OR WHAT. Easily my favorite Discworld book since Going Postal, which is why I feel the need to pick it apart into delicious, footnote-spiced shreds. Which is a nice transition, actually, so let's go with that! The footnote-spiced. Not the shreds. Although shreds are somewhat relevant. Maybe.

What I mean to say is, there was an abundance of footnotes, and I enjoyed every one. Unseen Academicals amused me far more than, say, Making Money, or Nation; Pterry's wit is, natch, eternal, but it does at times wear a little thin. This was not one of those times. Your mileage may of course vary, assuming you are the literary equivalent of one of those small queerly-shaped automobiles made in for'n parts, the ones are always driving on the wrong side of the road no matter what side of the road they, in fact, drive on, and may well run on corn rather than proper oil and cannot be trusted farther than Optimus Prime can throw them. But to me just the right chords were struck, and then struck again, with enthusiasm and an utter lack of shame. What can I say? I like running gags. Ottomy's Adam's apple and its entourage of Homeric similes was, by the end of the book, one of my favorite characters, or would have been, had it not had such stiff competition.

The characters! Oh, the characters. No. Better. O, the characters. The new ones were all of them brilliant, although I am rather partial to Trev Likely and Bengo Macarona (whose full honors go unlisted here purely for want of time). Glenda and Juliet's friendship, for all its echoes of Agnes and Christine, was a story in its own right. Pterry's people can usually be stuffed into their predecessors' general outlines, some more easily than others: but these are strangers, and they feel like it, with all the associated pleasure of ~~stalking them~~ plumbing their internal monologues like a handy wine-dark sea. And the old characters were done real justice. I like the wizards. They grew on me over the course of several books, rather than instantly winning me over, and I like 'em very much indeed. Ridcully and Ponder were lovely and entertaining as ever, despite surprisingly limited pagetime. Vetinari--

Vetinari deserves a new paragraph.

He made me so happy.

So happy, you guys, so happy.

I worry, you know, about that tendency of his to mellow with age, and to indulge his most melodramatic tendencies, not to mention his extended metaphors! I am a Very Serious Reader and when I see trends like that, I do not sleep well in the night! But my doubting was unjustified and I am duly repentant, for although he actually gets drunk in this movie and laughs out loud and makes inappropriate jokes re: your bowels and re: your wife (tantamount to 'your mom'!), I would argue that he is also more, well, Patrician, somehow, more like the earlier versions. In fact, he reminded me most of Vetinari in Jingo. Which, to me, is a Very Good Thing Indeed. He is more distanced, which does, alas, mean fewer appearances than of late; but the appearances he does make more than compensate. Plus, we get more of the ol' gentle clear-sighted-cynicism-fueled despair than we have in some time. God, his monologue about walking past an otter and its children eating a fish and its eggs in a stream? I DID NOT STOP LAUGHING FOR FIVE MINUTES. Vetinari and Eeyore need to have a the-universe-is-deflating party stat. If by 'party' you mean 'supposedly social gathering at which the only two participants sit in a dark corner and brood together', that is. And I do.

I dunno, I'll have to think about it more to pin down exactly what it was I liked so much about his lines and things. But boy did I.

I did not like Margolotta quite as much, though. I am biased. I admit this freely. I ship Grace Speaker/Lord Havelock Vetinari and I will to the death. (Incidentally, the additional mentions of 'the woman who owns the petshop on Pellicool Steps" mean I am going to be positively insufferable for weeks around those of my friends who also read Discworld and were unconvinced by my assertion that Grace Speaker Is Not A Mere Throwaway Line, No, Sir, She Is At Least Five Of 'Em.) That aside, however, Margolotta didn't seem quite as clever or as vampiric or as matronly or as generally interesting as she did in The Fifth Elephant. Part of which may be that we are no longer seeing her through Vimes' eyes, but the perspective change doesn't account for her lackluster dialogue. Eh. In Nutt's memories she was pretty fine. Only in person did she disappoint. Maybe in later books, if she shows up and they show up. *crosses fingers*

Speaking of which, I feel the need to inform you all that plottwist13 and I have a theory about Nutt and Lady Margolotta and Vetinari. It will be expanded on, whether you like it or not, at some barely future date, in a separate posts. Prepare yourselves. Or don't, it's not like we care how many innocent minds we unravel.

Anyway! Moving on, because, in fairness, my real complaint about this book had nothing to do with Lady Margolotta. My real complaint is that I find it too short. And I do not mean that in the complimentary "oh, I just wanted to keep reading and reading! " way. Or, well, I do, obviously, but I also mean it in the slightly less than complimentary "the plot was squished to jelly in the confined space of the last hundred pages and didn't do justice to all those gods damned subtle, subtle hints laced so mercilessly and so tantalizingly throughout! D:!" way.

Consider: both the romances -- Nutt and Glenda, Trev and Juliet -- were built up to beautifully and then glossed over, almost. It makes me want six more books about them. One thing about the Watch series; seeing Angua and Carrot and Vimes and Sybil's relationships mature was pretty glorious. We're going to miss out on even a solid glimpse of that kind of development for Unseen Academical's quartet, it seems. A premise rather than a narrative arc, as it were. Andy, nearly a fit heir to Carcer and Teatime at first, dissolved in the face of micromail and lemon juice. The former Dean and Ridcully never duke it out at all, their Epic Battle overrun by overgrown poultry. The ever-present Evidence of the Occult At Work is so briefly mentioned you might not notice it at all if you weren't reading the descriptions of Juliet's beard very carefully indeed, and while I can't see why you wouldn't be reading those descriptions carefully, I like to take into account all the possibilities. Like all Pterry's later books, it suffers from the burden of cross-references, of making sure all the themes get carried through, perhaps too blatantly in places, and in a way that eats up time that could be used to inject more complexity into the handling of the major themes, instead.

I'll tell you a secret, though. Right now? I really couldn't care less. I am too full of love.

UNSEEN ACADEMICALS. Coming to a bookstore near you. If you don't have the money, pray to Anoia or shake down a tourist in a busy street. It'll be worth the disapproving stares, and maybe even the hairy eyeballs, too.

P.S. Bengo Macarona/Rincewind, y/y? They are both canonically fast, skinny, football-playing gay wizards. It's only logic!

From the desk of my nine-year-old self...

Sun, 23 Aug 2009 19:12:49 GMT

... I bring the first complete story I ever wrote, dislodged from under piles of books in the chaos of moving houses: TWIN TALES, the tale of -- wait for it -- twins imbued with a sense of magic SO GREAT that a sinister Hispanic (?!) woman known only as Madame would do anything for the chance to teach them to control it: anything in this case meaning 'killing their mother, devastating their village home, and enslaving the villagers'. She gets her chance, and then proceeds to blow it completely by taking them on a quest to see the monster she hired to do the dirty work for no apparent reason other than that they wanted to. The monster explains matters to them, and they reject her utterly, shockingly enough, and go to complete their training with a handy local ~~philosopher~~magician-king. The thrilling journey concludes five years later, when they, now accomplished sorceresses, stumble across her in a forest and demand an explanation, which she gives as follows: Your mother was dumb and would have been a total failure at raising you anyway. Once they have it, all three go off hand in hand, happily reunited sociopaths that they are.

AND NOW THE EVEN BETTER PART:

From the prologue:

Hesitantly, a young man walked over to his wife’s room, carrying a tray full of food. He opened the door, carefully watching the slim form that lay at the window.

“Ania?” he whispered with dry lips. “How are you doing? Is the storm lighter?” The young woman’s head turned, hollow eyes staring. Then, lightning struck.

BOOM!

The sound of the explosion rocked the very ground around the house. The next morning, the villagers found the couple’s twins, asleep in the middle of the smoking ruins.

That is in fact the whole prologue. I include it mostly to demonstrate my stunning grasp of situational humor at even that tender age. Admittedly, I didn't intend it to be funny when I wrote it, but hey.

From chapter one:

“Cerin! Cerinthe!” called a rattle-boned old woman. “Come help with the chores, ye lazy young pigs!”

“Yes, Aunt Stingiana!” came the startled voices of two young girls as they tripped outside.

This would have been around the age that my father was reading me Great Expectations at bedtime. I can only imagine that Dickens' nomenclature is the inspiration for 'Stingiana'.

Meanwhile, in the woods Cerin got on Cerinthe’s shoulders tangling her bare feet into Cerinthe’s raven black hair.

Basically included just for the raven black hair bit. It is also worth noting here that the twins have no distinguishable personalities and their names go as far towards illustrating this as anything else. CHARACTERIZATION IZ HARD. ;__;

Cerin soon followed, sliding/dropping down the smooth, silvery bark of the birch. She landed on the spot where a squirrel had been a few moments ago. They both laughed.

I was apparently unable to pick a verb at points and thus included both, to... maximize the reader's appreciation of my advanced vocabulary? I really don't know. Also: see earlier note about sophisticated situational humor, man. THERE BE SQUIRRELS.

“Fire! Alert! Fire!” Mrs. Primly looked out the window. Seeing nothing, she was about to go back to her sewing, when a huge beast flew down. It had the wings of an eagle, the paws of a tiger, the legs of a cheetah, the mouth and head of a black mamba, and the back of a spider. The latter part had spun out a net, which it was using to catch many villagers, who were then struck unconscious by the giant paw. The monster tore down houses. Mrs. Primly fainted.

Primly, like Stingiana, is probably to be blamed on Dickens. The, uh, interesting anatomy of the terrible beastie, on the other hand, is my Creative Reinvention of a description of a Chinese dragon I had read recently, which involved a slightly more sensible but no less eclectic assortment (goat's chin, lizard's feet, etc.). Also, this section follows the last quote with absolutely no mark of the change of scene beyond a paragraph break. And this is one of the smoother transitions in the story.

Instantly they knew, as their magic stirred and told them what had happened. Also at that moment, they knew that their mother was a witch. More important, they themselves had the supernatural powers. Lastly they must speak to the monster that tore down the houses. Finally, after a long silence, Cerinthe said, “Well, best get to work then. Our magic will need sharpening.”

I like to think that using magic as the source of exposition was an ingenius way of cutting out the middle-man, you know?

From chapter two:

“Need help?” asked an unfamiliar woman’s voice, “I’ve got plenty to give ye.”

Still scowling, Cerin demanded harshly, “What?”

The woman, who had now revealed herself as a dark Hispanic, ignored Cerin’s foul mood, and answered, “Three things. Power, information, and abilities to teach.”

Cerin answered shortly, “The last one is all we need. Food and lodgning are all my sister and I can give in return.” She stalked off. The woman followed, musing.

Madame watched the twins. It had been two months since they accepted her, and she was sure they were ready to look for the villagers. Suddenly she heard cries of delight....

I would first like to register my COMPLETE MYSTIFICATION as to why Madame is a 'dark Hispanic' and, indeed, why there are any 'dark Hispanics' wandering around in my classic mock-medieval-Europe fantasyland, and second... uh... that's a lovely little almost-zeugma you've got there, Madame. You're going to give them the abilities to teach? Awesomesauce. Thirdly, see earlier note about transitions, lack of. Because why make it easy for the reader? (As you can see, some patterns have held true throughout my writing career.)

Okay, so this being two months later, the twins have finished being taught, theoretically, and are supposed to catch their stars, which goes well:

Suddenly, she screamed “AYE-YIYIYIYIYIYIYI!!!!” The lonely clearing was suddenly overflowing with light. Slowly a net of bluish white fire burst from her hands and hurtled into the sky, putting shadow on the moon. Soon it looked like a star itself. Perhaps ten minutes later, it dived back with a tiny, beautiful point of light in its depths. The net evaporated and the star fell back into her hand. After a moment, Cerinthe did the same. The twins stalked away, leaving Madame to her thoughts.

They do a lot of things suddenly. Also, they stalk a lot. But the best part here is that these stars then proceed to serve no purpose whatsoever for the rest of the story. It's like if you hung a gun over a fireplace, and when your house was attacked you resorted to such improvised weapons involving chopsticks because god forbid you even look at the gun or in any way acknowledge its existence ever again except as a decorative aspect, that would be like sacrilege!

From chapter three:

Reluctantly, the twins started walking towards the foothills at the bottom of the mountain, highlighted just now with the red of rubies, yellow of topaz, orange of citrin, pink of tournaline, and the deep purple tanzanite by sunrise. They trudged along with a dreaminess born of little sleep. Around their necks hung their stars on fine, silver chains.

This was also written during the peak of my fascination with gemstones. It... uh... it shows. *sigh* Also, last mention of the stars ever! :D!

As they pondered, a cavern suddenly opened up before the trio. At the bottom, magma like orange neon signs stormed and swirled, threatening those to dared to try to cross.

ANACHRONISTIC SIMILES FOR THE WIN.

Obvs. they get across through the ingenuity of transforming a spider web into a rope (why they didn't bring a rope, god only knows).

From chapter four:

They used wooden blocks with handles when it became too steep to climb the long cracks.

Why no. No, I do not have any idea what that is supposed to mean or how that would work.

Suddenly, a flood of water poured down over them, threatening to wrench their grips on the rock loose. Cerin wasn’t sure how long they had been there. All she remembered was Madame crying “Loose your magic!” as she filled the air around her with essence-power. Following her lead, the twins managed to keep hold, but only just. For the rest of the climb things went smoothly, and in a little while they reached the top. But there, they saw the dragon.

Again, the ever-useful SUDDENLY makes an appearance. Also my complete inability to keep in one character's head interests me in a trainwreck kind of way. Also: yay! A dragon! There purely because every good fantasy story needs a dragon! Yessss!

“The WHAT?” Cerinthe cried, but abruptly noticed a beautiful rainbow path off the summit. With a last look at Madame, she ran off with Cerin towards the path. Just as they had reached it, the sun dropped behind the silvery waters of the distant ocean. They stepped on the path, when suddenly it began to move with them away from the peak. The last part of the journey had begun.

This is about the point in my initial rereading of the story where I gave up trying to work out the geography. As to why rainbows are a suitable method of transportation? God only knows.

From chapter five:

When Cerin woke up, she found herself on a barren hill with sand blowing in her eyes. Cerinthe awoke in a moment, and the two faced the only landmark in sight: a tall, slim, silver-edged mirror, which floated in midair. In it appeared a picture of the monster who destroyed the village. Suddenly, a stream of villagers ran out of the mirror. Ignoring them, he growled, “So at last you are here. Your questions?” Finally, after a silence, they said in unison, “Why?” It was one word, but it was enough.

Thoughtfully, he rumbled, “Madame ordered me to enslave the villagers. Yet our very magical presence forbids denial of your wishes.”

“Madame--,” gasped the twins.

“Yes,” he laughed/roared, “and she sent the storm that night long ago that killed your parents.” His image disappeared, replaced by Madame. They gave her image one look. Then they walked away from the barren hill, their magic guiding them to a distant king who “happened” to teach magic. He agreed to teach them.

I'm including the whole chapter for much the same reason I included the whole prologue. Of particular interest is the recurring thing with two verbs I couldn't decide between, and the Very Helpful Magic (that couldn't have guided them to a teacher before they fell into Madame's clutches because... er... it was taking a quick break out back for a smoke?) This is obviously where I gave up trying to make the plot plausible and just ran with it. Unless that was the first word. Depends on your point of view, I suppose.

Suddenly, an old but still magic Madame cried, “Cerin! Cerinthe! You’re here!” from the trees. Cerinthe looked cold, but Cerin thought, “she did it say in the mirror that she did it because she loved us…” Suddenly she had an idea. If Madame gave up her magic, they and the king could trust her. She said so.

This is interesting because it did not, in fact, say in the mirror that Madame did it because she loved them. Also, high concentration of SUDDENLIES, for great lulz on my part.

Cerinthe said, “All right. But first she must give me an explanation.

Cerin agreed, “Yes I would too, MADAME!”

Try to work that one out. Go on. Try. I dare you.

Madame gulped, “You see, your mother was not as powerful a witch as you. She could not have trained you. I begged to train you when you were ready but she grew frightened (I was a total stranger). She swore never to let me while she lived. In rage, I killed her with a storm. Once sane, I fled in fear of myself. I got the villagers out of the way after trapping the monster, until at last there were no more obstacles. You know the rest.”

Cerin smiled, “So at last we know. Now let’s go back to the palace!” “And no more storms!” she added, grinning. Then, hand in hand, they walked off.

I wasn't kidding about the sociopaths. Not even a little.

THE END YAAAAY

This was not written nearly long enough ago for my tastes. I console myself that -- er, well -- my grammar was quite good, particularly in regards to dialogue, with a few exceptions? Haha? And I had a steep learning curve?

It's even better with illustrations. I'll have to see about uploading them sometime.

Yes.

(Thus ends my excursion into existence. I'm writing an epically long blog post about Australia and another about the writing camp shit and another about SCHOOL HAVING STARTED ARGH, but, really, I wanted to share this with you all. That's how much I like you!)

I'M GOING TO FOURECKS.

Wed, 22 Jul 2009 05:37:01 GMT

I mean, Australia.

For two weeks.

There will be kangaroo-harassment, and no visible effect on my rate of posting in this journal. (I FAIL AT BLAGGING I KNOW. I'll be back, eventually. I will!)

That is all.

A short story! Courtesy of campiness. Or something. BE EDITING.

Mon, 29 Jun 2009 22:41:27 GMT

I didn’t know what to do with Derek’s remains. I hated people who displayed urns on their mantle pieces like trophies. Also, our house didn’t have a fireplace; it had a television set. I could have put the urn on that but it might not have stayed on. Plus, what a thing for our son to see on weekend mornings over his cereal. I didn’t want to dispose of it at the service, though, because -- well, it seemed morbid, I supposed, or something like that, to treat what his father had called intimate garbage disposal, laughing too hard as he’d said it, like a performance. The Magical Derek Eats Fire And Escapes This World.

So after talking it over with his mother and my son the Tuesday following my husband’s death, I walked to the riverside carrying a balsawood box provided by the crematorium under my arm. Nice and poetic, like. And in the shadow of a bridge I crouched down and flipped it over so that the lid fell open and the ash slumped out in a mess of dead matter after I tapped the bottom twice.

It dusted my fingers with gray, hit water without a sound, barely breaking the scummy surface. The spill so fast, but the sink so slow, as if through treacle, flakes lowering by merciless degrees.

I brushed myself off and leaned over the curb, the better to watch him ripple away.

It would have been a long wait, at that pace of dissolution, but then the rain started and the water sealed itself up; I told myself that if he was still there after the rain his presence was to be measured in parts per million, in saturation constants, not in something I could hold vigil over, so I got to my feet, feeling brittle. By that time my hair was as damp as the knees of my jeans and it clung to my cheek, painted on a scattering of droplets that stretched into lines when I shook it out of my eyes. My face ached under my clammy pinstriped skin. It might have congealed into an papier-mâché mask.

I thought: I do not want that mess of a woman I saw in the mirror caked on my bones like plaster; but rubbing at the lines with the heel of my palm made my wrist numb rather than softening the meat of my cheek.

Besides -- sometimes, after a shower, he’d dragged his bitten nails diagonally from the corner of my mouth to the edge of my ear while I‘d settled against his flank. Surely the analogue -- lines to lines -- counted for something.

I thought: I want to hold details of him like that in place, to sew his past to my eyelids, and it‘d be worth wearing a mess of a woman for; but the memory, so startling in its clarity, was already fading.

Two unfulfilled wants, those thoughts, that curled somewhere deep in my gut. Maybe they hurt: wobbling, familiar pains. I wasn’t too concerned, I was happy to keep my eyes raised to the high shop fronts, the peeling white paint and pinkish gray stone of the city’s upper levels, and I walked home in the rain, not listening to the echoes in my empty head.

Our son was in the living room where I’d left him, eating slices of cold salmon from the reception with his fingers while my mother-in-law threaded her hands through his thin fair hair. She was trembling and it made William’s head bob up and down like a toy, but he didn’t seem to mind.

They were watching a commercial for expensive shampoo, and at some point after I’d left they’d slid off the faded sofa and onto the floor, piled up against the foot of the coffee table, far too close to the screen.

“Hey, you two,” I said, turning on the light because the dimness turned the long beige room grungy, crowded with story-tale grief, although the humming of the fluorescent bulbs almost made me wish I hadn‘t. He looked at me with his big froglike eyes, pupils surprised by the shine, dilate. The rims of iris were so thin around those dark-swollen pupils that they didn’t look like his father’s at all, for all that they were the same pale blue, the color of deoxygenated blood.

There was a scrap of salmon skin on his full lower lip, dark brown and patterned against smooth pink. “Hi, Mom,” he said, and sucked it off, a flash of milk teeth.

His dear old grandmother said “Adelaide,” like my name was a greeting. She’d liked my name, when he brought me home. Such a pretty name, she’d said.

She looked much deader than her son did before I had him burned. Her face fallen in like a false partition before a back room cluttered with unwanted secrets. She‘d stolen my son‘s blanket, which was probably why he was hugging his knees. He hadn’t changed out of the flimsy blue silk shirt he’d worn for the reception, either.

“You all right, honey?” she said, sitting up, hand still on him. “It’s done?”

I wanted to tell her to get out, to stop caressing my son‘s skull. Gently, so gently, I said, “I’m all right. I… said goodbye.“ Again. There was no finality to funeral rites in this country. Just a series of small deaths like stones.

“That’s fine. That’s just fine. It‘s what he would have wanted, you know. Maybe he’ll make it all the way to the ocean, huh? Wouldn‘t that be nice?” she said, apparently to William. “The circle of life. Have you seen the Lion King, Will?” (She was one of those who believed that most important lessons could be taught via Disney animation).

“Yes,” he said.

“Did you like it?”
“Yes. I liked the bit with the bananas, and the big flaming balls of gas,” he said.

“It’s almost five,” I said, a little louder, my voice solidified by guilt.

“Oh,” she said. She let the blanket slither off her, pool in a haze of wool around her hips. It uncurled into a fat caterpillar. William edged away from it. “I should get back to the hotel. Richard will be waiting.”

“Yes,” I said, and helped her up, patting her on the back when she was vertical, palms polite. Her shirt was weirdly sheer. The calluses between my thumb and forefinger caught on the fabric as I steadied her. I’d meant to squeeze her narrow shoulder but I didn’t like that catching roughness, and instead I gave her a quick, awkward one-armed hug she seemed grateful for.

“Thank you for taking care of him for me, Mary,“ I said. Even I wasn’t sure if it was irony.

She stank of soap, detached herself from my ribcage reluctantly when I withdrew my arm.

“It was nice,” she said. “You should send him to see me more often. He looks so much like Derek, you know?”

“I know,” I lied. “I will.”

“I’m right here,” William whined.

“Yes you are,” she told him, and bent to kiss him on the forehead, thin mouth hollowing in a loving O that blew his bangs up ludicrously when she exhaled against his brow, and which did not leave any shining mark. She was not a proper fairy godmother, you see. “And we are all glad for that. Stay safe, darling.”

She unbent to kiss me on the cheek. “We’ll both be by tomorrow morning to say a proper goodbye before our flight, Adelaide.”

I nodded and clasped her hand. “Stay for brunch,” I said, because my husband would not have asked me to, because I would have done it for him. Habit like a second mind, a second mouth, which was just as well because my own faltered now like I breathed, often and desperately.

“We certainly will,” the old woman said warmly, and sidled out the still-open door, which she closed behind her, conscientious even as she teetered on her new (black) high heels.

She was the kind of woman who had never had a library fine and I envied her precise, fidgety recollection, her exact grief.

William scooted over to me on his bottom and hugged my leg. “I don’t want to go to Grandma’s,” he mumbled, burying his face in the soaking front of my jeans. My shins were bruised from kneeling and his sharp little nose hurt, but I looked at him affectionately, glad not to be alone in my unreasoned dislike, and picked him up. Hands under armpits, like a toddler, although he was eight years old and inexplicably heavy for all that his delicate bones almost poked right through the thin flesh of his wrists.

He buried his face in my collarbone, unperturbed by the altitude change, and snuffled against the hollow at the base of my throat, while I shifted his weight so that he was sitting over my arm and rocked him sideways, his toes skimming back and forth across my knees.

“You don’t have to go to Grandma’s,” I murmured, kissing the top of his head. Another time I would have made disapproving sounds and swatted him, but if there was ever a time to indulge him and me, it was now, right? Now, when I could feel his heart stuttering against my ribs.

“Thanks,” he said, or rather hummed; I felt it more than I heard it, vibrating through my chest. He seemed content to stay suspended forever. I was starting to feel like a set of monkey bars, though -- a sore set of monkey bars -- and he was milky-sour in my nostrils, I could see traces of sweat on his folded eyelids. I winced. There was indulgence, and then there was indulgence, although it took me a minute to work out what it was I had to do about it, a practicality that forced through the fog.

“You need a bath, kiddo.”

His mouth slanted unhappily while I rubbed small circles between his shoulder blades and made a grapevine for the stairs. “But Dad gave me baths,” he said, which was true, which is why I hadn’t remembered before, and which might or might not have been a clever ploy to avoid having his protective layer of dirt peeled off but either way stopped me there, halfway.

My husband had liked washing things: dishes, windows, countertops, kids. He’d kept bathing William long after he should have, really, claiming that he never got to spend time alone with him, otherwise. He babied William, always. We’d argued about it. And I wasn’t sure in the slightest that it was okay to recall the late-night arguments, the jittery images and broken dishes, that it was okay to use the fact that he wasn’t there to do it my way. If I even had a way. Christ, I hadn’t washed dishes since college. I’d never washed William at all, not even when he was nursing -- that was when I gratefully passed him over to his father. I wasn’t even sure I remembered where to scrub. Behind his ears? Hadn’t that been proven to damage hearing a few years ago?

The boy had pulled away to stare at me, trembling with a small child’s complex, helpless defiance.

Derek, I thought, and backed up against the wall and slid down until I was slouched across several blessedly carpeted steps and William was sprawled over me, his round arms wrapped around my waist, chin digging into my belt. I closed my eyes for a while. I’d cried, earlier, at the funeral, discreetly and with a paper towel that stuck to my lipstick, smudged a darker pink every time I excused myself to the bathroom; and the same pressure was building up behind my temples.

“Sorry,” William mumbled, when I opened my eyes.

“It’s okay. Let’s get you cleaned up, huh? You might have to help, since Dad isn‘t here to do it. Can you do that?” Can you tell me how to wipe off all this grief, I asked, with my fingertips, but I doubt that carried through his downed skin.

“Yeah,” he said, scrambling to his feet. “I can take a bath by myself, even. Honest,” he added, when I eyed him dubiously. “I was only being silly.”

“Thank you, William,” I said, while he straightened up and balled his left fist and saluted, sharp and ludicrous. “You know I’m proud of you.“

His eyes were fever-bright, and he shrugged at my intent expression, looked down at his socks. Blushed. That fragile stain of veined red, so lovely. He was paler than either Derek or I had been, as children, paler and more inclined to embarrassment.

I looked at our worried son and climbed after him when he trotted upwards. The back of his head -- where the hair stuck out -- was silhouetted against the light of the landing, and it rose like a balloon.

He was undressing when I caught up with him, short pants pooling lopsidedly on the broad tiles of the bathroom floor. He had one foot caught in the tangled trousers, and he stood balanced on one leg as he kicked at stiff corduroy, mouth bunched up around the frustration under his skin. He seemed reluctant to finish stripping off any one garment, though; he moved anxiously, uselessly unfocused, trying to undo his buttons and free his foot at the same time.

I stopped his small bird-shaped hands and said, “Let me help you with that.”

He flinched.

“I told you, I can do it, Mom.”

“I know you can,” I said, sketching smiles like fish on his breast pocket with my fingers as I dropped to his level. “But you don’t have to do it all.”

“Dad’s gone,” he started.

“And I‘m not,” I finished, before he could shatter the delicate equilibrium I’d arrived at by denial and hope with his terrifying eight-year-old logic.

He nodded, and let go of his collar without further protest. He didn‘t say anything more in all the minutes I spent stripping him down to his vulnerable skin. It was warm and bright in that small oddly-shaped roomful of porcelain and polished brass fixtures, and I could see the goosebumps on his calves, clearly delineated by heavy gold light.

“Why don’t you put on a towel while I run the water,” I said, carefully.

He did. The towel was too small for him, hanging like a poncho; it didn’t cover his skinny legs, but he didn’t shiver, and seemed content to perch on the closed toilet seat, drawing the rough cloth protectively up to his chin. He looked like a moth, huddled under its milky wings. I ran the water.

When he did speak up, it wasn’t what I’d expected.

“Where’d Dad go?” he said, as I rolled up my sleeve and dipped my arm elbow-deep the hot greenish water, luxuriated in how the warmth blotted out the soreness.

“Somewhere nice,” I said wearily, hating myself a little for it. “Heaven. Didn’t your grandma talk to you --”

“Not that,” he said, dismissing cupids and clouds and sugar-sweet metaphysics with a shrug. “The ash. After you put it in the water. Where‘d they go?”

“I don’t know,” I said, stunned. “What do you mean?”

He said, with an air of much-tried patience, “Grandma said it would go to the ocean, but my geography teacher taught us last week that the river flows from the ocean to the re-ser-voir. So that can’t be right. ”

“Oh.” He’d been wondering about that since she’d left? “So it’ll end up at the reservoir.”

“Okay. Mom?”

“Yes?”

“What’s a reservoir?”

I stuck my other arm in the water, too quickly, viciously, because I wasn’t sure how many more questions I could take. He was staring up at the ceiling, and didn’t pay attention when I pulled back as quickly and sucked on my knuckles. I added cold water until I suspected any more would make it lukewarm. “You can get in now,” I said, and didn‘t answer.

He hopped off the seat and padded over, pausing for just long enough to let me bundle the towel away before easing in. There was no hesitation. It was hard to tell whether that was because he trusted me or because he was eager to prove -- something.

“Is this okay? Do you want me to stay?” I said, while he lay back, liquid lapping around his armpits.

“I can do it,” he said, but continued speaking when I pushed myself to my feet. “So what’s a reservoir?”

I sighed. “It’s a man-made lake. Like Crystal Springs. Reservoirs are nice and clean, they’re where we get tap water. We went for a walk there once, you remember.”

“Yeah,” he said, smiling a little. “Okay. We could go again?”

“Yes, we could. You‘d like that?”

“Yeah.”

The silence bloomed around that secret curve of a smile, reshaping the loose soft contours of his face. He glowed like a deep-sea jellyfish, there in the water, glowed like walking around an artificial lake would bring his father back.

“Will you be okay?” I said.

“Yeah,” he said, not turning his head from where it was pillowed on a wash-cloth over porcelain. “You don’t have to stay.”

“Maybe I should.”

He blew on the calm green water, so like glass viewed at a slant, and his reflection turned glassy as it fell apart into faceted waves, distorted, then simply vanished. But in that instant of strangeness, the mirrored face elongated, and the wet mirrored hair was dark blond, almost someone else‘s brown, and the mirrored eyes were very blue.

“Tap water,” he said. “Is this tap water?”

“Yes.”

“Tap. Water.”

He stared at me, and I understood his immature horror that crept up my spine by inches and was so much less frightening than a future without traces of him to hold.

That our son had just named what I’d been hoping for the last several hours.

“William, there are filters they use before any water leaves the reservoir. You are not washing with your father’s ashes,” I said, slowly, articulating each word so that I would hear myself.

“I know that,” he muttered. “I’m not stupid. I just -- I don’t know. I thought maybe. His… ghost. Maybe he‘s not gone.”

And he was waiting, brimming with the question, his throat a-quiver.

“There is no such thing as ghosts,” I said (to myself), and left.

I had to catch my breath in the hallway. I had to cling to the paneled wall, a leaf betrayed by wind and sudden frost, thrown off-guard by just how much I wanted to live that fantasy. Ghosts. For fuck’s sake. I was desperate enough for Derek that it didn’t matter if he was present only in, in the water, as long as he was there. Somehow.

“I can’t do this,” I said to the landing as I descended. The landing made no reply.

Downstairs, in the kitchen, I glared at the dirty dishes, stacked like crescent moons in the shade of a raised cabinet. I filled a relatively clean ceramic mug with tap fucking water, thank you very much, and drank too deeply, almost choking.

Please, I thought, coughing up phlegm.

Two facts:

The second swallow tasted quite ordinary but for the sweet edge of regret.

When I threw the cup at the wall, it cracked. Sounded like ripping silk. I watched the dust settle for thirteen minutes and seventeen seconds.

Then I went back to knock on the door, an apology in my knuckles if not my tone.

“William,“ I said, “are you ready to come out?”

“I guess,” he called out, though I came in to find that he was still rinsing out his hair; I glimpsed streaks of shampoo, white lacy foam in his hairline, blending in with the translucent blond roots. Eventually he wiped that off with his thumb, and turned to greet me with a gleaming face.

“All good?” I said. I was shaking.

“What?” he said, water dripping out of one ear.

“I said, all good?”

“Yeah.”

“You should get out now,” I babbled. “The water will be lukewarm, and then you’ll catch cold.”

“Okay,” he said, and obeyed. “I’m sorry I said that. About ghosts. I was sad, that’s all.”

“I know,” I said, handing him the towel. “You don’t have to say sorry. I was upset, but not at you. Never at you. What a stupid thing to get upset over, right? Tap water.“

“Right.”

He dried off while I pulled the plug and watched water spiral down the drain.

In our room, later still, I lay on the unmade bed and tried to find whatever peace William had seen in the ceiling. I counted three leaks, where the brownish water damage was shaped like other worlds, and one damp spot on my pillow, shaped like my skull. I’d taken my damper jeans off, and my jacket, with its zipper that dug into my stomach where my shirt had ridden up, the sleeves rolled painfully tight around my elbows. I’d even put aside the towel hanging off me. Discomforts so familiar, so reliable, that it was a shock to find I could rest without them, could disintegrate into a shallow sleep, sand in my eyes, the insectile clatter of rain on the roof in my ears.

Drowsing, I thought: Reservoirs. They’re where we get tap water. And bathwater.

But rain, too.

Drowsing, I dreamed:

“I love you, I love you, I love you,” I said. He leaned forward and kissed me on the forehead.

“I’m melting,” he said. And he was.

When morning came, I touched the center of my forehead. My fingertips came away wet.

When morning came, I opened my eyes to see a new leak in the ceiling overhead.

Now returning to your regularly scheduled frivolity.

Fri, 26 Jun 2009 17:52:16 GMT

THE INTERVIEW MEME

Questions from lunabee34 . If you want to be interviewed, let me know and I'll ask you some questions. (As in, like, DIFFERENT questions! :'D)

1. Idea for a fanfic that you love but will probably never write?

*buries head in hands* SO MANY OH GOD. Uhhh. Genderswapped!Carrot version of Guards! Guards!, probably. Not gonna lie. I just, I love Chalice. She was supposed to be a one-time joke but now she gnaws at me like a termite. And yet -- just -- no.

2. Favorite recipe?

BLACKBERRY PIE.

4 cups fresh blackberries

1/2 cup white sugar

1/2 cup all-purpose flour

1 recipe pastry for a 9 inch double crust pie

2 tablespoons milk

1/4 cup white sugar

DIRECTIONS

Combine 3 1/2 cups berries with the sugar and flour. Spoon the mixture into an unbaked pie shell. Spread the remaining 1/2 cup berries on top of the sweetened berries, and cover with the top crust. Seal and crimp the edges. Brush the top crust with milk, and sprinkle with 1/4 cup sugar. Bake at 425 degree F (220 degrees C) for 15 minutes. Reduce the temperature of the oven to 375 degrees F (190 degrees C), and bake for an additional 20 to 25 minutes.

...:D

You have to understand that there are blackberry bramble things around my father's house. So I have SENTIMENTAL ATTACHMENT. Also, tastes good, nomnomnom. I might otherwise have gone with something involving quail, but I had this on hand! So.

3. The Pratchett plot point you'd change if you could?

HMM. I guess 'The Beast'/'25% of Vimes' internal monologue from Night Watch' doesn't really count as a plot point, huh? In all honesty, I was incredibly sad that TIME TRAVEL didn't take Vimes back to the time when Vetinari was becoming Patrician and Snapcase was overthrown for making someone eat their own nose. But. Yeah. That's mostly just me being fannish. More seriously, then, I believe with all my heart that Maladict did not need to have been and should not have been female. I'M SORRY BUT IT'S TRUE. Even Jackrum I could take. But -- but -- Maladict.

4. What role does fandom have in your life?

~~Fandom doesn't have a role, fandom IS my life!~~ It's obviously a big part of what I do to entertain myself, not to mention that it satisfies my urges for attention etc. to a major degree, in a way that schoolwork and compliments from teachers can't, for various reasons, without being really unhealthily necessary (...well, that might be a lie. But I don't think it is, yet). Also, it's the only form of social networking I've ever really enjoyed: the fact is that I like people who like things that I like. If it weren't for that, I wouldn't like many people at all, and I'd probably be terribly stunted, as opposed to merely crooked. Er. Might have to work on that one a little before it reaches Fortune Cookie Status. But anyway.

5. Do you have pets? What kinds? Or why not?

I HAS A DOGGY. She is six years old, a husky/German Shepherd/POSSIBLY COYOTE mix, and she is -- wait for it -- wait for it -- beautiful. Yes she is. I don't have the ability to describe how pretty she is -- honestly, I suck at describing dogs -- but she is so. Pretty. Especially whilst begging for food I have no intention of ever giving to her ever. Big soulful eyes and neat paws, yess.

Well, that was more incoherent and flaily than I expected. But when am I ever as composed as I expect to be? I have so much to say about the writing workshop. I just need to write it all down, which I will do, as soon as I actually LEAVE the writing workshop. XD

And then, a week late, I remember about international politics.

Wed, 24 Jun 2009 00:56:06 GMT

You'll have read this summary already. Posting this mostly for myself. Or whatever.

Fuck if I know how to fix time zones, but now's as good a time as any to learn.

In other news: 'sup? I will resurrect when camp is over. Really I will. I miss being egotistical onscreen.

Hi, I'd like to introduce my face to my palm. Please get out of the way.

Sun, 07 Jun 2009 09:29:03 GMT

Title: Native Species' Territory Calls, Which When Anthropomorphized Resemble The Sound of Music
Author: gogollescent
Rating: ahahahaha I don't even know. What's the rating for RAPING YOUR CHILDHOOD?
Pairing: None yet. Later? Don't go there.
Summary/Prompt: Captain James T. von Kirk needs a governess for his seven children. Plz note: will only be funny if you have seen the Sound of Music and remember it well. Actually it might not be funny even then. But anyway. Yeah, basically, Star Trek meets the Sound of Music. This is the first act of probably at least five. *facepalm*
Note/Warnings: I'm an idiot. Did I mention the childhood-rape? Yeah. That.

II.I

[Morning. Or, er, well, not morning. But it's early, in any case, and the children are lined up in front of Spock's desk by height. They are not, however, color-coded. Yet. His room is austere, having none of the personal touches he could not help but notice on the night before (rotting pizza, holovids, etc.); this appears to disconcert the youths.]

SPOCK: [Sitting down] We will begin with – ng.

MCCOY: Something wrong, sir?

SPOCK: Ngh.

[The children exchange careful, inquisitive looks. Gary has the grace to look slightly apologetic, probably because he put that-which-we-shall-not-discuss on the seat. Spock does not stand; he closes his eyes briefly, and then opens them again.]

SPOCK: We will begin with a lesson in discipline.

[General groans.]

Namely, singing.

PAVEL: What?

MCCOY: Oh god.

HIKARU: What?

JANICE: Pardon?

LEE: I'm Gary!

GARY: You were supposed to make that joke last scene, Lee.

LEE: ...oh.

CHRISTINE: I've always wanted to take singing lessons!

[Her siblings gape.]

What? I can't spend all my time helping little injured birdies, and they're in short supply on starships, anyway. But Mr. Spock – Keenser doesn't have the right vocal cords to sing.

SPOCK: Ah. That does provide an obstacle. However...

[He rummages through the very small duffel bag at his feet for a time and comes up with a tambourine, which he hands to Keenser. Keenser shakes it with unhealthy enthusiasm.]

Satisfactory. Now... Simulations. Activate.

II.II

[Like magic, the screens fade into sight, and the floor is transformed into an acceptably yellow and rolling dune, under a copper, domed sky. Things tweet cheerily in the background, although there are clicks between tweets and it's all a wee bit surreal. Also, the way the light shines on the children's rather-too-large-and-rapidly-deteriorating Starfleet uniforms makes them look suspiciously like drapery. No one comments on this resemblance, for reasons beyond this narrator's comprehension.]

SPOCK:
Let us begin at the beginning,
a very logical place to commence;
in Earth literacy programs I understand the traditional initiation is A-B-C,
and in music it is the nonsense syllables do-re-mi.

Do-re-mi; repeat after me.
The first three notes in the octave are classically termed to be
do-re-mi. Do. Re. Mi.

(No, I do not know why, Mr. McCoy.)

(Muffle the tambourine if you please. Good boy.)

[To himself] How do humans have it? Do-re-mi-fa-so-la-ti.
Given the maturity levels of my pupils, I will have to simplify extremely.

Do, commonly placed as 120 hertz – no?
You will have to memorize the frequencies.
I know. I will spontaneously compose a musical mnemonic!
Repeat after me.

Do, a female Odocoileus hemionus,
Re, light in an idealized narrow lance,
Mi, the objective first person singular pronoun,
Fa, a subjective measure of distance,
So, an archaic form of clothings-production,
La, a particularly unfathomable name I cannot find a homophone for,
Ti, boiled water saturated with so much sugar it creates suction,
And do again, one octave higher, thanks to the organization of the diatonic cycle.

CHILDREN: ...can we skip the mnemonics?

SPOCK: Very well. Do-re-mi-fa-so-la-ti-do. Do it.

[The children do it.]

SPOCK: Acceptable. So-do-la-fa-mi-do-re?

CHILDREN: So-do-la-fa-mi-do-re.

SPOCK: So-do-la-ti-do-re-do?

CHILDREN: So-do-la-ti-do-re-do.

SPOCK: So-fa-do-mi-ma-ko-sen-so?

MCCOY: Now you're just fucking with us.

SPOCK: I don't know what you mean, Mr. McCoy. Put it all together.

ALL: So-do-la-fa-mi-do-re so-do-la-ti-do-re-do-so-fa-do-me-ma-ko-sen-sooooo!

[As they hold the last note, all lights black out with a crash and a curse from above.]

KIRK: [Over the comm] Why the hell have all the upper level functions of the computers on board been redirected towards... uh... a surround-sound holovid of a generic Vulcan landscape? Lights? LIGHTS! Is this some kind of sick joke?

SPOCK: I believe that concludes our lesson for today. Dismissed.

[Exeunt.]

II.III

[It is late in delta shift and Spock has retired to his quarters. The lights are dimmed, there is a distinct lack of drapes, so on and so forth. As he prepares to undress, he is interrupted by an announcement, and a thousand fangirls cry out in pain as he readjusts his uniform and listens.]

PAVEL: [Over the comm] ...we are encountering a phenomenon which resembles a lightning storm in space...

SPOCK: Fascinating.

[The door slides open, and Keenser waddles in.]

For what reason are you here, Keenser?

[Keenser bats his tambourine forlornly and mimics thunder via careful application of the wrist-wrist-elbow-wrist shake.]

Ah. You are experiencing sensations of trepidation in the face of an unknown encounter and desire illogical reassurance from the nearest mature individual because your... father... is busy manning the bridge?

[Keenser nods and looks pathetic. Also, wrinkly. Spock pats the side of the bed next to him, and Keenser climbs onto the headboard, totally ignoring him. There is a crash, as of thunder. McCoy enters at high speed, screaming.]

MCCOY: It has spikes! And tentacles! And tentacled spikes!

SPOCK: How would you feel about some illogically reassuring (but highly disciplined) vocal accompaniment!

[McCoy manages to inexplicably end up clinging to Spock's leg. Again, no one comments.]

MCCOY: That would just about make my day, you pointy-eared unpleasant-jelly-placed-on-seat-cushions-resistant bastard.

SPOCK: Hm. I understand that conjuring up memories with pleasant associations is the traditional Terran method of suppressing illogical levels of panic?

MCCOY: [Voice somewhat muffled by Spock's knee] Yeah.

SPOCK: What are a few of your preferred activities or images, Mr. –

[Pavel and Montgomery blow in. Pavel looks disgruntled, Montgomery looks unreasonably enthusiastic, and there is a general excess of wet flailing limbs.]

MCCOY: Gather round, we are going to have a musical interlude right about now.

PAVEL: Why –

SPOCK:

Precipitation on a waxy epidermis and spikes on native insects
Shiny new simulators and 18th century Earth writing-resurrects
Anonymous transitions in a mellifluous tone to sing
These are a selection of preferable things!

MCCOY: That's why.

PAVEL: Ah.

[Gary and Lee wander in, more or less unnoticed, and huddle by the foot of the bed. Janice and Christine are already there, having insinuated themselves while you were staring in horror.]

SPOCK:

Balanced differentials and qualified Vulcan lute players
Futuristic yet curiously retro technology and overendowed mayors

MCCOY: Okay, what did I say about the rhymes?

SPOCK: It seems to have slipped my mind, Mr. McCoy.

Buzzards that fly at night with an iridescent layer of oil on their wings
These are a selection of preferable things!

Vulcan girls in square bodices with muddy sashes
Sand that irritates my nostrils and eyelashes
Reddish-brown summers that melt into reddish-brown springs
These are a selection of preferable things!

When Klingons bite
When tentacled storms sting
When I am possessed with illogical grief
I recall a selection of preferable things
And go into an advanced form of denial which allows me to function through the crisis and then run into my room afterwards and break down and cry!

[Shocked silence. The children look each other, and then sing.]

ALL:

Precipitation on a waxy epidermis and spikes on native insects
Shiny new simulators and 18th century Earth writing-resurrects
Anonymous transitions in a mellifluous tone to sing
These are a selection of preferable things!

Balanced differentials and qualified Vulcan lute players
Futuristic yet curiously retro technology and overendowed mayors
Buzzards that fly at night with an iridescent layer of oil on their wings
These are a selection of preferable things!

Vulcan girls in square bodices with muddy sashes
Sand that irritates my nostrils and eyelashes
Reddish-brown summers that melt into reddish-brown springs
These are a selection of preferable things!

When Klingons bite
When tentacled storms sting
When I am possessed with illogical grief
I recall a selection of preferable things
And go into an advanced form of denial which allows me to function through the crisis and then run into my room afterwards and break down and cry!

[Fade to black.]

II.IV

[It's not long after that Pavel creeps out of the freakish place where Spock is cradling Keenser and lining up the rest of the children in military (if short) ranks and files. He tiptoes down to the airlock, where a shuttle, unnoticed by the flustered and bewildered crew, has docked. He stands in the bay for a moment, regarding with caught fascination the visage that emerges from the metal box – an alien, humanoid, greenish, with Vulcan physiology, but bald and tattooed and ravishingly handsome.]

PAVEL: Hello. My name is Chekov. Pavel Andreievich Chekov. Who...are you?

AYEL: I am Ayel. And I think I'm in love. With homo sapiens jailbaitus. [He stares.] How old are you, kid?

PAVEL: [Proudly] Sixteen going on sewenteen!

AYEL: Hey, no kidding? You're legal on Tellar! I mean. Uh. Let's start again.

You are sixteen going on seventeen
Baby, it's time to think
Better beware, be canny and careful
Baby, you're on the brink.

PAVEL: [Clasping hands to breast] Is a night for musical interludes!

AYEL: [Taking Pavel's hand]

You wait, little boy, on an empty stage
For fate to turn the light on
Your life, little boy, is an empty padd
That men will want to write on.

PAVEL: [Dizzily] To write on...

AYEL:

You are sixteen going on seventeen
Fellows will arrive by mail
Eager cadets and alien cads
Will offer you Romulan ale.

[They twirl, and do the tango as it was meant to be done.]

Totally unprepared are you
To face a galaxy
Timid and shy and scared are you
Of things beyond what you can see (in the navigator window)

You need someone older and wiser
Telling you where to steer
I am one hundred and thirty nine going on eighteen
With me, you need have no fear

(...when we blow the rest of your ship to smithereens. But anyway.)

[Pavel falls back over Ayel's arm, does a high-kick, rights himself, and resumes crossing back and forth the airlock in a frenzy of excitement (and hints of drapery, for no apparent reason).]

PAVEL:

I am sixteen going on sewenteen
I know that I'm naive
Orions I meet may tell me I'm sweet
And willingly I believe

I am sixteen going on seventeen
Innocent as a (Russian, vodka-drenched) rose
Confirmed bachelor fail, drinkers of ale
What do I know of those?

Totally unprepared am I
To face a galaxy
Timid and shy and scared am I
Of things beyond what I can see (in the navigator window)

I need someone older and wiser
Telling me where to steer
You are one hundred and thirty nine going on eighteen
With you, I need have no fear

AYEL: [Leaning forward] Yes, you –

PAVEL: What was that noise?

AYEL: I do not...

PAVEL: I think, I think that was your ship, is putting a hole in my ship.

AYEL: Uh.

PAVEL: Run. Tell your captain to hold truce, for a little while, or leave us alone. And then I can see you again. [He flutters his eyelashes convincingly.]

AYEL: Oh, yes!

[He scuttles off to the shuttle and departs in record time.]

II.V

[Elsewhere: on the bridge of the Enterprise, all hell has broken loose, not least because Kirk has just discovered that Spock is now engaging in an entertaining game of soldiers with his children as chess pieces – for educational purposes! -- and, also, has been teaching Keenser the basics of warp technology. Plus, there's a hole in his ship.]

KIRK: Also, when I ask Gary a question, he responds with “Yes”, “Maybe”, “Prospects not so good”, or a number! You've turned him into some kind of magic 8-ball!

SPOCK: Are his eyes glowing silver?

KIRK: Er. Yes!

SPOCK: Do not be anxious, Captain. Perfectly normal side effect of the appropriate medications.

KIRK: [Rallying] And Montgomery has started pronouncing equations and mathematical symbols aloud! You're turning them into soldiers!

SPOCK: Was that not your intention in obtaining for them a Vulcan tutor?

KIRK: Well... yes... but not like this!

SPOCK: I count six exclamation points in your last seven spoken sentences, Captain. Calm yourself.

KIRK: ...

MCCOY: [Stage whispering] This is the bit where you shout: easy for you to say, you green-blooded hobgoblin!

KIRK: ...no, no, I'm pretty sure that's all you, Lenny boy.

MCCOY: Oh. Pointy-eared bastard, then?

KIRK: Right! Easy for you to say, you pointy-eared bastard!

[The scintillating conversation is interrupted when the Enterprise takes a second blow and we pan over to the lower decks, where screams and fire fill the stage. Through the raging tumult, it is possible to make out some poor toasty cadet holding up a sign, which, while crisping, reads 'TO BE CONTI--' (illegible due to burns).]

I honest to god have no shame.

Wed, 03 Jun 2009 07:20:16 GMT

More on Star Trek later. For now:

Title: Native Species' Territory Calls, Which When Anthropomorphized Resemble The Sound of Music
Author: gogollescent
Rating: ahahahaha I don't even know. What's the rating for RAPING YOUR CHILDHOOD?
Pairing: Kirk/Spock, for now.
Summary/Prompt: Captain James T. von Kirk needs a governess for his seven children. Plz note: will only be funny if you have seen the Sound of Music and remember it well. Actually it might not be funny even then. But anyway. Yeah, basically, Star Trek meets the Sound of Music. This is the first act of probably at least five. *facepalm*
Note/Warnings: I'm an idiot. Did I mention the childhood-rape? Yeah. That.

I.I

[It is a nice day. Peaceful like. The sun shines, the glassy ground shines, the rock fails to shine but does look very impressive and menacing. In the desert, countless small many-legged things scuttle through the shifting dust, indistinguishable from the red haze of heat and dirt. They make countless small noises, too, the hisses and sizzles and crunches that accompanied their somewhat horrifying but perfectly natural way of life, which layer and echo off the cliffs to create a curious effect.

Which is rudely interrupted by a voice singing. In a pleasant low tenor.]

SPOCK:
The dunes are alive with the sound of music –
that is, with native species' territory calls,
which when anthropomorphized resemble the sound... of music.
My illogical side wants to provide accompanying vocals.

My illogical side wants to provide counterpoint
for the lizards that cover the rocks,
my illogical side wants to echo the notes that fly
on the breeze from the academy clocks,
to express amusement that has the wet quality
of hallucinated water,
and to continue this cacophony past twenty one zero zero
like a Vulcan vulture at a scene of slaughter.

[Faltering]

I come to the dunes when I am filled with an illogical sense of isolation,
for I know I will hear what I have heard before.
My impulses will be comforted by the territory calls –by the sound of music!
And I shall provide accompanying vocals once more.

[Spock, silhouetted against the bronze sky, comes to a reluctant halt, presses two hands dramatically to the appropriate places on his breast where its hearts are presumably beating arrhythmically, and looks up just as, in the distance, bells begin to ring]

SPOCK: I am late for a very important date.

[Exeunt.]

I.II

[Within that noble institution's confines, three respectable Vulcans are consulting about him even as he approaches. They hover in a convenient alcove, shadow-cloaked and menacing in the well-meaning way of Vulcan schoolchildren. The cardigans do their part for the overall effect.]

VULCAN BULLY #1: How do you solve a problem like half-humans?

VULCAN BULLY #2: How do you catch an arthropod in flight –

VULCAN BULLY #3: I know! We'll bully him thirty-five times and then call his mother a whore!

[Spock enters.]

SPOCK: I apologize for my tardiness. hope I have not caused inconvenience to –

VULCAN BULLY #2: Your mother caused inconvenience to me. Last night. After curfew.

SPOCK: Oh no you did not.

[The short period of activity which followed this declaration has been cut from the text to ensure the family-friendliness of this media.]

I.III

[Later that evening: the magnificent hall of the Vulcan Academy of Science, with the fading light of dusk reddening its great windows, and its vaulted ceiling tinted to a precise aesthetic perfection, is only slightly marred by the wrinkly old Vulcan at the center as he prepares to inform Spock of the decision that will change his life and create the pressing need for this detailed record of events.]

ELDER: [Sternly] Spock, I am here to discuss your record as a member of the Academy. There are two incidents concerning us.

SPOCK: [Wiping blood off his cardigan] If I may inquire, which two incidents would those be?

ELDER: Your conflicts with a peer...

[Spock does not wince. Pointedly.]

ELDER: ...and your decision to apply for a disciplinary and domestic position with the retired human Captain... James T. von Kirk.

SPOCK: You recommended that course of action yourself immediately following the incident, sir. It was logical to investigate other options after the distressful circumstances of my outburst.

ELDER: I may have been too hasty. It was logical, but unnecessary – [his eyes roll up in his head and he chokes a little on the force of narrative imperative before continuing] – I mean, and necessary, because while you are exceptional, Spock, we feel that an academic suspension is an appropriate response. Not a long suspension, but, perhaps, long enough to remind you of the logical path, and to reject your human impulses.

SPOCK: Thank you, councilor. I am grateful for your proposed solution, which is agreeable to all concerned.

ELDER: Spock –

SPOCK: [Helpfully, raising his hand in the Vulcan salute] Live long and prosper. [He turns to go.]

ELDER: [Stopping him] Did... did you just tell me to go die in a fire?

SPOCK: No, councilor. I distinctly heard myself say 'Live long and prosper.'

ELDER: Never mind, never mind. Yes, indeed. The unfortunate side effects of age must be causing problems in my aural tract. Yes. Dismissed.

[Spock turns to go for a second time.]

You know – you have the ability overcome any obstacle, Spock. I encourage you to climb, ah, local mountains.

SPOCK: Mountains, sir?

ELDER: Mountains. Indeed. Every mountain, if you like.

SPOCK: I see, sir.

[Exeunt.]

I.IV

[In a shuttle on the way to retired Captain James T. von Kirk's retired ship, the famous Enterprise, surrounded by an unfamiliar bustle of diverse activity and divers alarums, Spock is seated near the lavatory. It is cramped, gray, and smelly in the shuttle, and he appears to be enjoying himself, at least until he is joined by a harassed Leonard McCoy, who is currently eleven and greenish, and screams incoherently at the nurse all the way to his chair before sprawling into sullen non-silence.]

MCCOY: I'm terrified of dying in something that flies.

SPOCK: Ah, astrophobia?

MCCOY: How should I know? I'm a prepubescent boy, not a doctor!

SPOCK: [Referring to a palm-holovid] Are you Leonard McCoy, son of Captain James T. von Kirk?

MCCOY: [Continuing to exhibit persistent greenishness] Yes, and I might –

[Spock produces a plastic bag. Various unpleasant proceedings, well, proceed.]

MCCOY: Do you always carry vomit baggies with you on shuttle flights?

SPOCK: This is my first shuttle flight. However, as I have been hired as a caretaker for juvenile humans, I expect that I will –

MCCOY: Wait, wait, you're the new governess?

SPOCK: I am not sure 'governess' is an accurate description of my –

MCCOY: And you're Vulcan?

SPOCK: Indeed.

MCCOY: This is going to be fun.

SPOCK: Pardon?

MCCOY: Never mind. [He seems momentarily torn.] Although I do owe you one. I mean. Well. Look, just watch where you sit down, man. Vulcan. Whatever.

SPOCK: I am not sure I understand your meaning.

MCCOY: Yeah, well. Thanks for the baggy, anyway. It was nice knowing you before I, you know, knew you. Space bros?

[He offers a fist. Spock regards it with interest and concern.]

SPOCK: I am not familiar with this ritual.

MCCOY: [Dropping the hand] No, you wouldn't be.

[An awkward pause ensues.]

SPOCK: If I may ask a personal question, Mr. McCoy... why do you not share your father's surname?

MCCOY: You may not ask.

SPOCK: ...

[The shuttle docks, and all further conversation is cut short, although McCoy implicitly agrees to show Spock his way around and to the captain's quarters. They walk in silence through a careful pastiche of cardboard hallways, and are only interrupted once when an old, defunct mess of pipework moves Spock to creativity.]

SPOCK:
What will this day be like?

MCCOY: [Aside] Squishy.

SPOCK:
I wonder.
What will my future be?

MCCOY: [Aside] Brief.

SPOCK:
I wonder.
It could be genuinely fascinating to investigate the socioeconomic differences –

MCCOY: Psst. We're almost there. Get to the good bit.

SPOCK:
I have always been intrigued by the unknown,
have always wished to explore,
and I now appear to be facing the unknown;
therefore, the logic behind my trepidation is poor.

A captain and seven adolescent humans.
Why does the thought make me hesitate?

MCCOY: If only you knew, you poor green-blooded bastard. Do we need to linger dramatically at the door?

SPOCK: Yes.

MCCOY: Why yes, I did bring a comic book, thank you for asking.

[McCoy leans against the wall and produces a copy of Star Trek: Countdown. Spock, momentarily distracted, eyes it curiously.]

MCCOY: Hey, I'm not even sure which universe we're in. Don't hate.

SPOCK: [Recovering from momentary setback]
I require a way to staunch these unnecessary doubts.
If I do not there is a risk that I will not succeed.
I must extrapolate to reassure myself of my own fitness.
I must recall that I am perfectly prepared and indeed,

confidence is the fundamental issue.
Confidence in my capabilities, confidence in my confidence in my capabilities and tissue –

MCCOY: [Mouthing the words after Spock says them, with a look of dawning horror] Okay, scratch that, I'm not waiting for you.

[Spock has the grace to appear abashed.]

SPOCK: Not tissue?

MCCOY: Get in there before I rip your pointy rhyme-deaf ears off.

SPOCK: [Reluctantly] Very well.

[McCoy makes like a tree and leaves. Spock gets in there, hesitantly.]

I.VI

[In there proves to be a mostly desolate room that has few signs of a personal touch and is essentially a place to sleep. A condom on the table, right next to a pre-warmed phaser, would suggest that the room does have other purposes, however lonely, but such subtleties are lost on Spock, who stands in the center and with his austere lines looks right at home, or would but for the cardigan. Kirk enters while Spock is taking all this in. He is disheveled, and there is something furry and adorable on his head, which no one comments on.]

KIRK: [leaping back] AUGH!

SPOCK: Greetings. You must be Mr. von Kirk.

KIRK: That's Captain von Kirk, thanks. Who the hell are you?

SPOCK: I am Spock.

KIRK: Oh, you're the governess!

SPOCK: I was led to believe it was a tutoring position, Captain.

KIRK: Right, right. Tutoring. Governessing. Same basic business. Well, welcome aboard, Mr. Spock. I expect you want to meet the kids?

SPOCK: It would be advisable to introduce myself to my charges, yes.

KIRK: Of course. [He whistles.]

[The children file in. Well. 'File' is a very generous term. 'Scramble', maybe, would be a better one. Or 'spill'. There are seven of them, ranging from a very small swaddled child to a young man, almost fully grown, give or take a few years and a few adorable curls.]

KIRK: [Pointing] This is Pavel, he's sixteen. This is Leonard, he's fourteen, you've already met him from the way he's smirking like the obnoxious little brat he is. His Aunty taught him that expression, didn't she now, Lennykins?

[McCoy stops smirking.]

MCCOY: You're not my real dad.

KIRK: [Ignoring him] This is Hikaru. This is Montgomery. This is Lee. This is Gary. This is Christine. This is Keenser.

[Spock's gaze travels to the small swaddled child, who on closer examination does not appear to be human.]

KIRK: [Whispering loudly] They don't all have the same mom.

SPOCK: [Helplessly] But young Keenser appears to be –

KIRK: Shhh! He's still in the sensitive stage of development.

[On cue, Keenser bursts into tears. At least, they might be tears. It's a little difficult to tell. Kirk looks reproachful, though, so it's probably tears.]

SPOCK: ...of course. Well. [He looks over the slouching, sardonic, incredibly pretty six and the unhappy one, and carefully does not pass judgment.] I am Spock, your assigned tutor. I hope we will have no undue disagreement. You will come to my quarters at 0700 tomorrow, please, for your lessons, to begin at once.

[He glances at Kirk, whose encouraging grin is rapidly turning glassy.]

That is, I believe, all. Dismissed.

[The children stare at him, uncomprehending.]

KIRK: Out, you lot.

[They scamper.]

So... you're a cold, logical hardass, then?

SPOCK: That was one of the qualifications for the position, I believe.

KIRK: Oh yeah. Oh yeah. I mean, I'm more spontaneous, and cheerful, and friendly, you know? And you're all... cold... and logical... and emotionless. Perfect counterpoint, right? We'll balance each other out. I'll soften you, you'll give me that edge to deal with the children now they need to learn to conform. Yeah.

[They stare at each other for a while. Or, to be more accurate, Kirk stares at Spock while Spock fixes his eyes on a point two inches above Kirk's left shoulder, out of politeness.]

KIRK: Ever get the feeling that there's something a little bit backwards about this picture?

SPOCK: I'm not sure I follow.

KIRK: Like roles have been switched, somehow.

SPOCK: I am rather tired, Captain.

KIRK: Right. Right! To bed with you. See you in the morning. Have fun. Don't step in anything.

[Spock exits.]

KIRK: And now... [He hastily pulls his script out of a drawer.] Now I... do a little dance? About my dead wife? [He shakes the script.] Which wife? Goddamnit, how do you do interpretive dance without knowing which damn wife they want you to damn well interpret with your goddamn handpuppets?

[He tosses the papers aside, disgusted.] Kirk out.

[Exeunt.]

OKAY I DIDN'T INTEND TO RESURRECT MYSELF AND THIS BLAG UNTIL SCHOOL WAS OUT BUT

Mon, 01 Jun 2009 03:40:17 GMT

I thought you all would appreciate this little relaxation-from-studying exercise.

When you get home from work tonight you're so tired your hands have finally stopped shaking, which is kind of a bitch since you went to all the trouble of stopping at the drugstore for pills that would steady you. No, them. You're not a little disembodied right now, flying apart at the seams, you walk gingerly lest your skin slough off and your long hunched body dismember itself. It's been a horrible day, a horrible year. You can't remember when you last got a good night's sleep.

Night terrors, that's the thing.

Your vision blurs alarmingly when you switch on the bedroom light and fluorescence pools in the corner of your eye. Brightness-blind and dizzy you stumble on the pair of hopeful, too early bought summer flip-flops that are treacherously near the door and will stay by the door until you work up the energy to answer your friends' invitation to the pool; you stumble, yeah, and then there's movement, scuttling movement under your heel. You trip, fall, probably scream but if so it doesn't register except inside you. Ugh ugh ugh; you're a slob but it's not like you ever eat anymore, thank you nervous disorders, and you don't deserve this. Rats, you think, flat on your stomach, covering your eyes with your fingers, more for the grounding pressure of knuckle-to-socket than for defense against whatever is still an inch from your face, you can feel it.

You look and, surprise! It's not a rat. You can't quite focus but it's definitely not a rat, because it's wearing a sweater and hello, that's him.

"Colin?" you mumble, and prop yourself up on your elbow and shake the hair out of your face and whoa there, that is definitely him. (You would know. Didn't you memorize the shape of his skull under his thick brown hair while he was fondling your hip? Because, you thought, still think, that if you want to put a dent in something it's only fair that you learn everything about it first). Only he's tiny, you don't even know, he's probably smaller than a real rat would have been anyway. Seriously. He's tiny. The thin pink mouth, the forehead, the eyebrows, his half-tucked in ears, every detail is absolute and familiar, but so small it makes you shudder. Size shouldn't matter, ahaha, but oh it does. He looks like some kind of alien doll, miniature and perfect, like, perfect, because it's him it's all of him compressed into an inch, a breath, a candle-stub of being, and what the fuck is this?

He's gaping and then he gets it together and he says something only you can't hear him. Short vocal cords, your hindbrain supplies, too high of a pitch for the human ear.

You consider finding pencil lead and giving it to him and setting him down on a sheet of paper or something, or else, hey, you could just put him on your laptop and he could play hop-scotch! (Dear god, you're going insane. Or maybe that was already accounted for when your one-inch-high step-brother appeared in your room). And then you consider that this is madness, and you don't have to play along. Why would you even want a hallucination to explain itself to you?

He's playing charades now. You stare at him and sometimes you can't see him and sometimes you can. Note to self, get more... something. Sleep?

You'd forgotten how much you hate him, actually. There's nothing like having him right in front of you to depress you. You're an adult, or practically an adult, and you've been very mature about the whole thing and done the shrink proud. She'd be prouder of what you swiftly realize your not-shaking-anymore hands and your still-stinging feet want to do to him. Therapeutic, right? It's good to hash it out again and again in your imagination until it works, right?

But maybe you shouldn't because you're better than that, even in your head.

He makes this exasperated look and he runs forward on his ludicrous little legs in shrunken jeans and suddenly he's clinging to your wrist, all of him wrapped around it instead of just his fingers (not strong but strong enough to hold your wrist to the wall, yes). That decides you and you slam him down onto the spongey sole of the flip-flop because what the hell, sleep-deprivation is making you crazy so you might as well clock up some brownie points for your next session on the psychiatrist's clean clean sofa.

He shrieks like a hungry baby, flat under your forearm. You admire him for a moment, wiggling and colorful beneath your smooth freckled skin, and remember that he's claustrophobic, that the one time you tried to drag him into a closet and give him the sloppy kisses he convinced you you needed he threw a fucking fit. His fingertips are like needles against the lacy blue veins of your wrist.

You tap him lightly on the temple and he passes out. You watch the bruise form, like a drop of blue ink from the kind of old-fashioned pen you've never used in your life left on good yellowy paper. He lies there on the sandal, back where he started you guess. What he was doing there you can't say. He hated it when you wore sandals back in the salad damn days of your shared childhood. He hated the way you used to admire the white knob of your anklebone.

You roll him out of the flip-flop and kick off your loafers and peel off your socks, because it's not like you haven't read enough books to know how dealing out just deserts work.

When you're done the figment of your imagination doesn't fade, even though it's just a mess on the paper towel you laid out expressly for this purpose, now. You can still see scaled down intestines and a tablespoon's worth of blood, most of which is staining your sole (but not your soul) in a lovely chrysanthemum of drying red. It reminds you of the frog you dissected together in fifth grade. How romantic, you think, and go to bed confident that you won't recall any of this shit when you wake up.

Except... the remains aren't gone, in the morning. You try to think what to do with them but it gives you a splitting headache. You end up feeding it to your neighbor's small, yappy dog, which finds it delicious. A week later you get to tell your shrink that the nightmares have stopped.

And everyone is happy.

The first? An all_unwritten prompt: "Tell us something about your pet."

The second? "Imagine you're a girl who absolutely loathes a certain boy (the reasoning is up to you). His name is Collin (picture below for reference). This boy happens to be in your room, however he's an inch tall and stupidly laying on one of your flip flops / sandals. You decide you want to kill him by stepping on him slowly and painfully with your bare foot, considering he has claustrophobia, along with a phobia of feet. If you're feeling extra cruel, you could even use him as the insole to your sandal as you walk around on him. The possibilities are endless at his size. Feel free to torture him beforehand if you'd like, since you know his phobias.

Being as descriptive and creative as possible, write this scene in 1st person, like a narrative or even a diary. (If you can't stand 1st person, 3rd person works as well.)"

You can even incorporate your own ideas into this, if you'd like. Make it a bit more interesting!

As this scenario is pretty vague, a good way to make it really good is an emphasis on description and imagery."

okay, what the hell

Sun, 26 Apr 2009 04:13:05 GMT

two of you lot have birthdays today and another of you has one tomorrow

THIS IS UNREASONABLY JUNGIAN

if any of you want fic, comment and I will get back to you forthwith*.

*in five years**
**Discworldean***
***And by 'Discworldean' I mean proper 800-day years, kthx

how do you call, thees ees a social... expeeeeeriment

Wed, 15 Apr 2009 23:40:25 GMT

MEME!(!!!!)

Comment to this entry and I will pick a character you know. Then you answer the same questions I have posted.

aramis_chan gave me Samuel Vimes. Shock, I know.

1. Do you like this character?

Yes. Very much. Because he's hilarious even when he's being angsty/angry/defiant/resigned to his fate as a Lone Straight Man (i.e., all the time). And because he's v. v. different from me while kind of similar to my father. (Shut up, it's perfectly legitimate to seek out father figures in fiction!) Except not as intelligent and therefore more relateable...to. Yes.

2. What name/names do you call this character?

Vimes, usually. Lately "the ex-Commander", when I'm feeling cruel.

3. What image-color do you associate with this character?

copperbadge 's default icon - so a brassy color, I suppose.

Or that light woody shade you get in old eggshells, har har.

4. What image-song do you associate with this character?

Uh.

Haha.

YES. I, LIKE THE REST OF MY GENERATION, AM COMPLETELY UP-TO-DATE ON CURRENT MUSIC, ETC., ETC. I KNOW MANY LYRICS FROM WHICH I CAN PICK AND CHOOSE AT LEISURE. I'M JUST ELECTING NOT TO RIGHT NOW BECAUSE THIS QUESTION DOES NOT PLEASE ME.

Haha.

5. What blood-type do you think this character is?

AB, because of this fic: sam-storyteller.livejournal.com/70605.html#cutid1.

6. Of all of the titles that this character appears in, which characters do you like to put this character with?

Well, his wife, I quite like putting him with his wife, in, you know, healthy moderation. And I have once-- once, mind-- been guilty of putting him with his boss, because there's nothing quite like guilty slash. And I have contemplated genderbent!Carrot/Vimes, because I am sick and unsquickable. Let's see. Oh, yes, how could I forget-- I make no promises, but there may be some Vimes/Angua in my upcoming AU.

I don't have a particular favorite, really. I just like 'im. If I get to make him fail miserably at romance, this is an added bonus.

7. What would you want to say to this character?

Er. Nothing except 'It wasn't me what done it'. Possibly.

8. Which do you want to do with this character: Shake hands, hug or kiss?

I'm going to go for the fourth option, viz. 'run away', because let's face it; in real life Vimes would be, in the words of Moist von Lipwig, "just scary."

I IS A-WRITING

Sun, 12 Apr 2009 01:21:52 GMT

It was noon, when most young Assassins were outside, mocking their neighbors' choice of trousers. Havelock Vetinari, twelve years old, nearly alone in the dormitory, and currently lord of all he surveyed(1), considered the newcomer with interest.

“How long do you think it will take him to figure out that there are not many improvements to be made on your average dagger?” Ahmed said idly. He was lying on the bunk across from Havelock, and his face was buried in his pillow, but then he had good ears and doubtless he had gathered the gist of what the boy who had been hastily inducted two days ago was trying to do with Guild weaponry. The clinking sounds were a tipoff, along with the occasional “Oh dear.”

“Depends,” Havelock said. “I’m not sure he’s actually trying to improve the dagger, per se. I mean, even Downey would have figured out by now that as long as you’ve a sharp edge –“

“– and a handle,” Ahmed murmured. “Not one of your better plans, that.”

“Would have worked perfectly well if Downey’d only had to the decency to hold still while I was disarming him,” Havelock said, briefly distracted.

“I think you’ll find that that goes for most failed assassination attempts in history, Vetinari.”

“What I was trying to say,” Havelock said, with dignity, “is that I believe he’s using the knife for something else entirely. He’s inventing something.”

“Like what? Something to hold Downey still for you?”ldquo;Be silent, mortal.”

“You need to stop reading religious texts in your spare time. It can’t be healthy.”

“You’ve never read a really fiery religious text.”

“Excuse me? Klatch is the mother of all fiery religious texts,” Ahmed protested.

“And your point is…? Just because you live there doesn’t mean you appreciate it.”

“Heretic!”

“Illiterate.”

“Sausage eater.”

“Not since winter break,” Havelock said, mournfully. “It’s almost enough to make me buy one of Dibbler’s. Porridge in Grune! I ask you.”

Ahmed snorted and started to say something almost certainly ungracious about the merits of the Guild’s menu when the boy, who was still tinkering away, cried “Aha!"

Havelock jumped back, and Ahmed almost rolled off the edge of his bunk. When they had both recovered themselves enough to glance down - albeit, in Ahmed's case, whilst dangling from a convenient sheet - they stared.

The kid - Leonard, that was his name, Havelock remembered abruptly (sharp objects can do that) - was holding up a cup, with a steel pole driven through the center, girdled by three knives, which were whirling at high speed. He had an embarrassingly innocent expression of triumph on his vaguely cherubic face.

"Er," said Havelock, with considerable eloquence.

"Ah," Ahmed tried.

"What the hell is that?" they chorused.

Leonard looked modest, and began, "I call it the..."

It'll be a fearsome torture machine, Havelock thought, wisely.

An implement of mass destruction, Ahmed decided.

"...Makes Drinks By Cutting Fruits Into Tiny Bits machine!"

(1) Downey was out buying a razor(2).

(2) At the time, Vetinari believed there to be nothing on the Disc so disturbing as a twelve year old in need of a shave. He was quickly disillusioned, though.

Also, a prompt from all_unwritten: Silence is not golden.

And then there is this.

Cigarette smoke hot on your ear and cheek, your sister's hands on your broad shoulders. The memories are still there: you can feel them in the hollow of your left hipbone, where a bruise is turning yellow, and in your mouth, which is dry and empty. (Did someone cut off your tongue?) And perhaps, if you stuck two fingers between your sore teeth and whistled, they would bleed up through your hard palate into your eyes. Perhaps if you pressed your palm against the flat of your leg, you would catch them there.

But until then they are gone and you don't miss them. It suits you to be the tail end of a sentence, without context or explanation, and only the shadows to guide whoever is reading you, in this instant, back to the beginning. A story curled in on itself like the thread strung through a nautilus by an ant who lost the scent of honey halfway through.

(Metaphors, yes, because there are no words left for the disconnect between what you were and what you are.)

Your sister kisses the back of your neck and says nothing. She believes in solidarity and clinical amnesia. You try, and fail, to recall her name.

SATISFYING CONCLUSIONS ARE OVERRATED.

I LIVE; or, seven things you didn't really want to know about the life of me.

Fri, 03 Apr 2009 23:36:32 GMT

1. I have a sore-thing on my thumb where I gnawed the cuticle a leetle too much.

2. I went to bed at one o' clock this morning.

3. The yearly project for AP biology is officially done.

4. BY THE WAY HOLY SHITTING YES I GOT ACCEPTED INTO THAT WRITERS' STUDIO I WAS TALKING ABOUT OH YEAH BABY UNFINISHED SHORT STORIES ABOUT WOMEN KIDNAPPING THEIR NEPHEWS FOR THE WIN

5. I have not been taking my medications regularly. Please forgive the occasional lapse of IOWA HERE I COME reasoning and cognitive functions.

6. I love you all from afar. And it's spring break at last, so, in the immortal words of Havelock Vetinari, BRING IT.

7. Stress has induced one worthwhile, long, involved, and fascinating dream which I will relate shortly, when I recover.

This is a historic moment.

Sun, 22 Mar 2009 23:05:26 GMT

Chat log from Sun Mar 22 4:03 PM

me: HI MOM. HOW ARE YOU?

winding_number: capital

I think that might be the first pun my mother's ever made in her life. At least, the first pun (or play on words) made in English.

I'm awed. Really I am.

I AM what's wrong with my generation.

Sat, 14 Mar 2009 06:36:25 GMT

Yesterday in history (the class, not the recording of mankind's past) we had a substitute. A crazed substitute. Who we shall henceforth call Mz. McVerrrrryCondescending, as my father dubbed her.

Yes, she spelled Ms. with a Mz. on the board. I don't question, I just roll with it. Or not, as the case may be. For Mz. McVerrrrryCondescending began the class with a robust lecture on our assumed idiocy, illiteracy, insolence, with riffs on our inability to take high school as seriously as we ought and consider the economic crisis' effect on our future, &c., &c. She appeared to be drawing most of her evidence for the selfsame conclusions from her experience subbing for another school, which we shall call the Darkside to my high school's Mountain of Goodness and Light (With Only One Shootin' To Date), in terms of academic quality. I could understand why she would have composed this tirade, from the examples she gave. I just wished she would have told it to them rather than us.

I was angry. I'm not sure why, exactly, except that I have a passionate aversion to being treated like an idiot and it's not something I'm used to dealing with. I don't deal with it, in fact.

So I, with all my usual tact and grace (deadpan voice and stare included free gratis), raised my hand when she was pausing for breath and said, "Why are you telling us this?"

She replied that she wanted to make the most of this opportunity to enlighten us. That did wonders for my state of irritation, as I'm sure you can imagine.

I inquired as to why she hadn't just told it to the Darkside class that seemed to be her intended audience.

She explained that she took every opportunity to loose this little spiel: at dinner parties, to her daughter, to her daughter's friends, &c. (I have every sympathy for her daughter, who was brought up several times as an example of a very good student who was having her chances butchered by the economic crisis.) She then went on to tell us that she had to because there was something wrong with our generation.

I believe I may have begun to splutter and protest that our generation was no worse than the last at this point, and so forth. She asked me whether I wanted to leave the classroom, to which I said "Gladly" with still more tact and grace before stomping out for a brief intermission.

A highlight? As I was exiting as disruptively as possible (not that it mattered; the class had dissolved into oo-ers at this point), she started saying, very loudly, that the problem had begun with the Vietnam War when Questioning Authority was, apparently, invented.

Invented. Yes.

Alas, I missed the rest of it when she closed the door pointedly, although during the respite that followed I did have a drink of water and I got through two (whistled) stanzas of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer before she let me back inside.

I started to say that questioning authority had actually begun some several million B.C., when a bunch of Africans had up and moved, at which point she cut me off, not wanting to hear my splendidly thought out argument. (Read: really lame caveman jokes.) She demanded to know how old I was.

"Fourteen," said I, taking a certain amount of pleasure at her disdainful expression.

"I am much older than you," said she, "and I know much more than you, and that's scaring you, and that's why you're lashing out. So go sit down and be quiet."

I'm sure, on a subconscious level, that it's true I and most teenagers are frightened of adults, being aware as we are of the value of knowledge and our lack of it; but I can't say that her telling me I was afraid of her was doing much to scare me or elicit the respect she seemed to want. I sat. Another girl asked what I had been doing that was so wrong by stating my opinion (not that I'd actually gotten much of a chance to), and she explained that I had been unforgivably rude.

At which point I apologized. Loudly. I really was a very good person about it, all things considered. I should get points or something. Really. Of course, the fact that I then asked if we could please discuss this like reasonable people in the most insultingly implicative voice possible probably docked a few, but even so.

To my immeasurable shock, she refused to agree to such a discourse, and commenced with the movie we were supposed to watch, pausing only to ask the class what 'deity' meant in the triumphant tone of an interrogator about to be vindicated in their suspicions of evil and also to tell us to write down that six thousand Jews died a day! And it took fifteen minutes to fill up a gas chamber! Fun statistics for all the family!

She left a lovely report for Mrs. Middling, who was most amused by the whole business and apparently suspected that the troublemaker mentioned in aforesaid report was me, although Mz. McVerrrrryCondescending did not know my name and therefore did not include it. I can't imagine how she guessed.

It's still bothering me, in case you can't tell. I'm not good at stupidity. Especially when I can't tell how much of it is mine. :\

In other news, someone broke into my piano teacher's car and all I could think about was the spiderweb pattern on the fragments of dark, green-edged broken glass left in the corners of the empty window. And my father's car... stopped going halfway to home. We got towed.

It's been an odd two days and a most appropriate Friday the Thirteenth. I don't really know.

Thu, 12 Mar 2009 04:41:23 GMT

A middle-aged man walked across the road, pausing to glower steadily at the big, shining car - mine - that had come to a reluctant halt when he stepped off the curb. He was heavy-set, dignified, his skin nut-brown, his head shaved smooth. The gray shadow of hair over brown scalp, I remember that, the way even that shadow was smooth and reflected the sunshine, and the same shadow on his upper lip and chin, not stubbled, just shadowed with the memory of hair. Because of the bunched skin between his eyebrows, he looked angry, yes, and also because the nostrils of his flat nose were flared, and because his dark eyes were so deep-set and the whites of them so white, like he was crazy, and because his mouth was wide and the corners were down-turned. It was odd, you know, to see such an angry face over the stark edges of his white collar, over his black sweatervest, his beige slacks, his polished black shoes that had no laces or buttons that I could see. He was holding a styrofoam cup of coffee out in front of him, stiffly, but not like a man unused to holding coffee. At least, I didn't think he held it like a man unused to holding coffee. There was no reason for it, that was just my first thought, seeing his square right hand wrapped around styrofoam.

At nine, Alec was a thin, cruel boy with a scientific fascination in the world around him, which mostly took the form of dismantling it, one frog or fly or servant girl at a time. He wasn't malicious, particularly. He did not bully and he was often gentle, though cold. But he committed small and precise crimes - to educate himself, he said. And he was his father's son, for all that he had inherited his mother's hair, his mother's grey eyes, his mother's wintry skin. You could see it in his face, the born-in charming arrogance of his sharp features.

Yes, that was the General's son.

He grew to be a thoughtful young man with a curiously flat face that offered nothing. He smiled often. He had clever hands. He avoided courtly pastimes and had a way of talking that unnerved his father's associates, although his father approved of it, quietly. There was no gossip about Alec, very little was even said openly: redheaded but no spitfire, competent, not very lively but obviously headed for great things. An enigma with nothing to hide.

I was ambling down the market lanes, minding my own business, kicking aside a few grubby village kids when they got in the way, when one of them bowled right into my knees.

To no one's great surprise but mine, I fell flat on my face in a humorous fashion. The girl had darted out of the way, though not quickly enough to avoid my outstretched hand. I dragged her up as I stood and lifted her off her feet until she was dangling a few feet in the air, and looking rather cheerful about it.

She was sun-browned and white-blonde, an odd combination to my lowlander's eyes. Her pale hair radiated out from her dark face like dandelion fluff. It might have been endearing had she not just knocked me over and gotten grit in my chain-mail, never a pleasant experience. I've never been good at ages, but she was small and slightly underfed and boyish: I thought maybe ten or so. Something around there. Sweet, in a lopsided way, with large dark brown eyes, one a little larger than the other, which was unsettling but common enough.

That was when I sniffed, out of habit. And reeled.

The brat stank of witchcraft.

"Oh, you have got to be kidding with me," I said, to no one in particular. No one in particular did not answer.

I sighed, and slung her over my shoulder. It was time to see the damn crone. Again.